www.hr - Croatian homepage since 1994.

Football

This is, certainly, Croatia's most popular sport. It' began developing in the beginning of the 20^th century, and Croatian football federation was formed in 1912. Croatian teams and players played in the league of former Yugoslavia with the exception of 1941-1945 when Croatian league existed for five years.

Despite the privileges that the other clubs had, Croatian clubs, especially Hajduk Split and Dinamo Zagreb (now called Croatia) were always on top having not just sports, but a certain political value, being a way of expressing Croatian nationality. In addition to many domestic titles, Dinamo Zagreb won the Fairs Cup (now called UEFA cup) in 1967.

Croatian players also participated in the national team successes. Drazen Jerkovic was the best scorer of the World Championship in Chile (1966), and the names of Bernard Vukas, Josip Skoblar, and others are written in all football history books.

Nowadays, Croatia has it's own league with twelve teams, which are participating in the Europan cups. But, the most important is that Croatia has a national team, which played the first match against USA in October, 1990. In just eight years, Croatia grew up into one of the world's football forces. National team's reputation was built in EURO '96 qualifying group with beating Italy, then by good presentation in England '96, but most of all, by amazing success on the World championship in France '98 where they've won third place, being just a step from the finals.

The names of Croatian players are known to all football fans in the world: The best scorer of the WC, Davor Suker played for Real Madrid, just like Robert Jarni. Zvonimir Boban was the AC Milan's star, Alen Boksic after Marseille and Juventus, resided in Lazio, while Robert Prosinecki, who played in both Real and Barcelona, headed Croatia Zagreb. Also, there are many young players that are becoming famous players: Dario Simic, Silvio Maric, Igor Tudor...