Croatia edged closer to next year's World Cup with an emphatic 4-1 home win over Greece on Thursday in the first leg of their two-legged playoff.

The result left the Greeks with a difficult task to overhaul the deficit in Athens on Sunday if they are to reach their third successive finals.

Striker Nikola Kalinic, who stood in for the injured Mario Mandzukic, shone as he won a penalty for Croatia's opening goal scored by captain Luka Modric and netted the second to give the home side a 2-0 lead at Maksimir stadium.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos pulled one back for Greece before Ivan Perisic made it 3-1 with a thumping close-range header in an action-packed first half.

Andrej Kramaric scored Croatia's fourth shortly after the break, poking the ball in from two metres after Sime Vrsaljko had cut out a poor back pass.

Advantage Switzerland

Switzerland made the most of a controversial penalty converted by Ricardo Rodriguez to secure a 1-0 win away to Northern Ireland in a pulsating and bruising first leg of their World Cup qualifying playoff on Thursday.

Northern Ireland were stunned when Romanian referee Ovidiu Hategan pointed to the spot after Corry Evans turned his back to block Xherdan Shaqiri's acrobatic volley at point-blank range.

The ball appeared to hit Evans on the shoulder and, even if it did touch the top of his arm, there seemed no possibility that he could have got out of the way.

Rodriguez ignored the jeering home fans and calmly sent Michael McGovern the wrong way in the 58th minute to put the Swiss in the driving seat in the two-leg tie for a place at next year's finals in Russia, with the return in Basel on Sunday.