Regrettably, you snipped the part where I said that I have a lot of respect for the Croatian team and you gave some reasons why. Everything you said is true and it is definitely worth a discussion, but it is different from the assessment as to which is the better team playing under a certain national flag. Croatia is a great soccer team and I follow their games at the big tournaments with a lot of excitement. Generally, I have a lot of respect for smaller nations competing well at international tournaments. Or countries that are not at all favorites like Morocco eliminating Spain and Portugal at the World Cup in Qatar. I am all for surprises like that.
But when it comes to a comparison, I can only consider the facts that are relevant to the game itself. Whether those facts are based on shortcomings or injustices isn't relevant for that question alone. Take as an example Qatar at the handball World Cup in 2015 when they naturalized players from abroad in order for those players to become part of the Qatar handball team. That is ridiculous. But when someone asked me whether I think that "Qatar" is going to beat team X, I have to accept the fact that some names on the Qatar squad are there, even if they shouldn't be under normal or fair circumstances.
If I had to choose the team that is better in my opinion, I would choose France over Croatia and I am not saying that France is like vastly superior and the odds are 90:10 in favor of France in any game. But I would say that France is stronger and in a long term battle would probably win more games than they tie or lose against Croatia.
I think it is important to remember that a teams success doesn't mean that it will continue to do that neither. Look at Brazil, could anyone tell me that Brazil is a bad team? Obviously not, they are one of the best rosters in the whole world but they are failing, they are getting results worse than Croatia, does that make them worse than Croatia? To me it doesn't, they are still a better team. Just put the rosters side by side and check the results, you will see that it is not going to be the same thing at all.
However, the results mean that the managers and the team doesn't play the way they should and that's the reason why they are getting worse results. So, it is not about which team is better, it is about which team is more of a team.