Croatia hosted handball world cup 2009. Plenty of Croats who watched Korea vs Slovakia, etc, in Zagreb. And every match Croatia playd 15.000. Split too. Today half emty arena when host plays, same against you. This sucks very bad.
Josko, is not only RK Zagreb. Croatia Handball NT is 10 time more popular than RK Zagreb. But not many care about the basketball NT. And still they are at least top 6 nation in europe.
Well, regarding the popularity of handball... nothing against the sport, I watch a game now and than, just that...
Out of 10, 20 max. kids I knew practicing handball in my youth, 2 of them made it to some of the top european clubs (Brumen, Natek)
Out of countless kids, spending so much time on outside basketball courts or in the gym that their own mothers had troubles recognising them... 1 is a really good streetballer, 2-3 got to ncaa div II, many more refused to move there, 2-3 might had some limited roles in 1st Slovenian league and most of them have their memories when they did good against some of the bball players that made it to euroleague, NBA or ABA level. It's barely a comparison.
If handball would achieve such frenzy in Zagreb and so much kids playing it as bball does in Dalmatia nevermind the difficulties basketball has over there, I think they would easily raise so much talent they wouldn't end up in the quarterfinals of World championship this year, just like Slovenia did (I know we've got an overall worse team than Croats). And God knows that Slovenian handball talent pool is extremely limited and yet we're making it to the top 4-8 teams in the world without handball being even close to bball in popularity. How can that translate to handball being that much more popular in Croatia, yet without the results showing that. I don't believe Slovenians are some sport ubermensch to have some secret edge there.
edit: damn, as a mod i'm shitting on the georgia-greece topic :S moving posts into a separate thread
