Breakdown of Igrači su igrali dobru utakmicu.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
dobar
good
igrati
to play (sports)
igrač
player
Questions & Answers about Igrači su igrali dobru utakmicu.
Why are there two words, su and igrali, to say "played"?
In Croatian, the past tense is made of two parts. First, you need a helper verb. Here, it is su (are), because the subject Igrači (players) is plural ("they"). Second, you use a special past-tense form of the main verb, called the l-participle, which is igrali here. Literally, the sentence is constructed as "The players are played".
Why does the main verb igrali end in -i?
In the past tense, the l-participle has to match the gender and number of the subject. Because Igrači (players) is a masculine plural noun, the verb takes the masculine plural ending -i. If it were a group of female players (igračice), the feminine plural ending would be used, making it igrale.
Why is it dobru utakmicu instead of the dictionary forms dobra utakmica?
The players are doing the action to the match, which makes the match the direct object of the sentence. In Croatian, direct objects take the accusative case. For feminine nouns that end in -a like utakmica, the ending changes to -u. The adjective dobra (good) has to match its noun, so it changes to dobru.
If I want to leave out Igrači and just say "They played a good match", how does the sentence change?
If you drop the subject, you have to swap the first two words and say Igrali su dobru utakmicu. This is because the helper verb su is a "clitic" (a weak, unstressed word) that usually cannot start a sentence. It jumps to the second position, right after the main verb.