Ivan13
Not posting anymore
There is just no way ice hockey could come close to the upper echelon of sports in Croatia. Infrastructure is non-exsistant, apart from Zagreb and some small towns the hockey tradition is non-existant and while MedveÅ¡čak is a great story that will hopefully live on, it does little in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the development of hockey in Croatia. Knowledge level of the coaches that are working with young kids isn't very good as well.
Football will always be #1 and nothing will change that, after that you have handball (where we have years and years of tradition and where we are a power house nation), waterpolo (same as handball), basketball (we were a great nation in the past, we've fallen since, but our youth national teams are having their way with the rest of the European competition and only USA can stop them, the future looks bright once again). More kids are also playing volleyball, futsal, etc than hockey.
And after those team sports you have sports like gymnastics, athletics, tennis, rowing, swimming, ping-pong etc that are more popular among the kids than hockey.
Football will always be #1 and nothing will change that, after that you have handball (where we have years and years of tradition and where we are a power house nation), waterpolo (same as handball), basketball (we were a great nation in the past, we've fallen since, but our youth national teams are having their way with the rest of the European competition and only USA can stop them, the future looks bright once again). More kids are also playing volleyball, futsal, etc than hockey.
And after those team sports you have sports like gymnastics, athletics, tennis, rowing, swimming, ping-pong etc that are more popular among the kids than hockey.