{"id":4191,"date":"2023-12-08T16:43:17","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T16:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.football-stadiums.co.uk\/?post_type=countries&p=4191"},"modified":"2024-03-04T15:58:44","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T15:58:44","slug":"croatia","status":"publish","type":"countries","link":"https:\/\/www.football-stadiums.co.uk\/grounds\/croatia\/","title":{"rendered":"Croatian Football Stadiums"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Known as nogomet, football is the most popular team-based sport in Croatia. It is overseen by the Croatian Football Federation and the teams that play their football in Croatia originally took part in the Yugoslavian league structure when the country was made part of the Soviet Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the wake of World War Two.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the 1990s that Croatia became a country in its own right once more and the both the Croatian football federation and the new league was formed.<\/p>\n
Modern-day football in Croatia is dominated by two football teams; namely Hajduk Split and Dinamo Zagreb. They have each won the top-flight more than any other team and Hajduk Split are the only Croatian side to have reached the knockout stages of the European Cup, more commonly known as the Champions League. They achieved this in the 1975-1976, 1979-1980 and 1994-1995 seasons.<\/p>\n
Nine Croatian players have won the competition with non-Croatian sides, including Igor Biscan with Liverpool, Davor \u0160uker with Real Madrid and Mario Mand\u017euki\u0107 with Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n
Internationally Croatia are considered to be one of the best football teams from the Balkans, yet they haven\u2019t actually ever won anything. To an extent this is because the country\u2019s team was swallowed up by the SFR of Yugoslavia, meaning that the team as we know it today wasn\u2019t actually formed until 1990. There were some teams that were sanctioned by FIFA and represented the Banovina of Croatia and Independent State of Croatia between 1940 and 1944, but that side was dissolved when Yugoslavia absorbed Croatia in 1945.<\/p>\n
The first competition that Croatia took part in on the international stage was the European Championships of 1996. They appeared in the World Cup for the first time two years later, managing to finish third in their debut in FIFA\u2019s flagship tournament. Since 1996 they have only missed out on one edition of the Euros in 2000 and one World Cup, which was the 2010 competition.<\/p>\n
On this page we\u2019ll give you some information about the sort of stadiums you\u2019ll expect to find if you go to watch football in Croatia. We\u2019ll also fill you in on how the league system works as well as tell you some more about the history of football in Croatia and the success of the national side. It will be exactly as exciting as that sounds.<\/p>\n