Brief history
Our Roots and Comebacks
When it comes to football, Slovenia is very special. And it was considerably late. Some sources claim that a sort of an »English game« was played in some high schools on the territory of the present Slovenia (which then in most parts belonged to Austria) in the late stages of the 19th century, but the evidence is quite thin. Historians found a newspaper report from 1903 on the establishment of a Football Club in the town of Lendava/Lendva in the East of Slovenia, which was a part of the Hungarian half of the Habsburg Double-Monarchy, but there is no further data on any matches played in this city in the decade to follow.
A new and decisive boost for the development of football was given by the students of a high school in the capital Ljubljana, who founded the Hermes Football Club in 1910. Stanko Bloudek, one of the most outstanding sporting pioneers in Slovenia, was among the first players. He was probably also the first one to import a real leather football as well as shirts and shorts from his father's native country - Bohemia (now a part of the Czech Republic). Bloudek, who later won fame as airplane and stadium designer, but more than anything the constructor of mammoth ski jumping hills in the Slovenian valley of Planica (giving birth to the new sport - ski flying - which now enables the best competitors to fly over 230 metres and stay healthy), was also among the founding fathers of the first big football club in Slovenia - Ilirija Ljubljana - in 1911.
The first international football match in Slovenia on the club level was then played in 1913, when Ilirija hosted the prominent Prague team of Slavia. The famous Czechs won by such a margin (10:0), that they left the Slovenian team one of their player to coach them for some months. However, it was the World War I which stopped football from developing further. In any way, the Czechs can be considered first footballing teachers in Slovenia. Unlike in many other countries in Europe and in the world, English civil engineers and sailors, who were mostly responsible for spreading the seed of the global game, were quite rare in Slovenia in those days. Their pioneering role was taken - with some delay - by the Bohemians and Moravians from the present Czech Republic. And the mentioned Bloudek, who at least had a Slovenian mother.
After World War I in 1918, most of the present Slovenia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians (which was later renamed Yugoslavia). The development of football in Slovenia was largely influenced from the football centres of Zagreb, Split and Beograd. However, on April 24th, 1920, the founding of the Ljubljana Football Association (which later became the Football Association of Slovenia) provided the vehicle for a partly independent Slovenian way in football, although this organization was integrated in the then joint Yugoslav Football Federation. That's why the Ilirija player Stanko Tavčar was able to become the first football player from Slovenia to take part in the Olympic football tournament in 1920.
Nevertheless, on June 23rd, 1921, the Slovenian capital Ljubljana hosted a remarkable international match between the French national team and selection of players from Slovenian clubs. The Chef de Mission of the French guests was the acting FIFA President, Jules Rimet, who later initiated the first World Cup tournament. France won against Slovenia 5:0. Although the match was not official by international standards, it was, at least in Slovenia, widely accepted as the first appearance of a Slovenian national team. More than 70 years later, Slovenia could finally play official matches, too.
In the meantime the quality of the players developed fairly but was often hit by bad club management. So, players with more talent had to go to clubs in other parts of Yugoslavia to play at higher level. Beside Tavčar, the only other Slovenian player able to make it to the Yugoslav national team, was Maks Mihelčič, who served as goalkeeper of the Croatian side Građanski Zagreb in the late twenties and early thirties. Unfortunately, he was denied participation at the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay, in which Yugoslavia came into the semi-finals. For this tournament, only players tied to clubs from the Serbian capital Belgrade were considered by Yugoslav footballing authorities.
The next turning point in the history of Slovenian football was the end of World War II in 1945. From that time on, the club scene in Slovenia developed rapidly, although in the beginning the best Slovenian player still had to fulfill their higher ambitions outside Slovenia. Ivan Toplak from Maribor became national team player in the fifties as member of Red Star Belgrade and later got fame as well respected coach and FIFA instructor on various continents.
In he mid-sixties, Olimpija Ljubljana emerged as the club showcase of Slovenian football by spending more than 20 seasons in the Yugoslav top flight until 1990, with Maribor joining as the second club from Slovenia for a short while around 1970. But it was Olimpija Ljubljana, where the biggest stars of pre-independence Slovenian football came into the spotlight: the versatile midfielders Branko Oblak and Danilo Popivoda, who in 1974 became the first Slovenian players ever to feature at a World Cup final tournament. In Germany, Branko Oblak, got voted into the World Cup Top 11 and scored the first Slovenian goal in the history of the event (a 7:0 free kick on June 18th, 1974, in the match in Gelsenkirchen between Yugoslavia and Zaire, which ended 9:0). Oblak was signed by the German outfit Schalke 04 after the World Cup and later joined Bayern Munich. Popivoda, on the other hand, got a transfer to Eintracht Braunschweig, an emerging German club of the times.
In the eighties, Srečko Katanec and Marko Elsner, used Olimpija Ljubljana for the staring point of their successful national team careers. They both won bronze with Yugoslavia at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, whereas Katanec also played at the European Championships in France that year. Six years later, Katanec became the third and the last Slovenian player to appear at the World Cup as member of the Yugoslav team. The hard working midfielder was the first Slovenian ever to win an European Cup with his respective club (the Cup Winners' Cup with Sampdoria Genoa) in 1991. He also featured in the final games of the European Champions' Cup s well as the UEFA Cup.
The breakup of Yugoslavia and the independence of Slovenia opened a completely new perspective of football. The Slovenian FA was swiftly recognized by UEFA and FIFA and was entitled to participate on all international levels with newly formed national teams. The first official international match was recorded in the Estonian capital Tallinn on June, 3rd, 1992, in which Slovenia drew 1:1 with the home national team in a friendly encounter. The domestic league, the fourth tier of Yugoslav football league system back in 1991, suddenly became the gateway to Europe, not only for individual players but for clubs, too. The opening years were dominated by the leading clubs of Olimpija Ljubljana and Maribor, whereas the national team mostly relied on players, who played for Yugoslavia at various levels at the time of breakup, especially Đoni Novak and Darko Milanič, who collected some caps for the senior team. Later, when the Slovenian national team started the preparations for its first appearance in the 1996 Euro qualifications, Srečko Katanec joined the team despite his knee injury, while the squad also profited from the rising star of Slovenian football, Zlatko Zahovič, who had started to shine in the Portuguese league. The first official qualification match on September, 7th, 1994, in Maribor against the World Cup finalist Italy was a success. Slovenia drew 1:1 in a highly competitive affair in which the home team was even denied the winning goal by the referee who missed to see the ball bouncing clearly behind the line after a goalpost-shot by Darko Milanič. The qualification campaign in general was promising, too. Slovenia recorded three victories (two against Estonia and one vs. Ukraine), which was not at all a bad performance by the rookies.
The optimism of the early days however faded. In its first World Cup qualification appearance for France 1998 Slovenia recorded one single point, although it came after a memorable draw in Croatia (3:3), which later came in third at the 1998 World Cup. But there was no time for depression, because the change came quickly and somehow unexpectedly. Srečko Katanec, the former star of Yugoslavia and the mighty team of Sampdoria, took the national team as head coach right after the 1998 World Cup with a total of six months of club managerial experience. But he changed the odds dramatically. He brought discipline to the team and motivated the players to perform wonders. Slovenia sensationally qualified to the Euro 2000 play-offs and managed to knock-out the Ukrainian team around its star Andriy Shevchenko. In the first leg in Ljubljana, Slovenia came from behind by scoring a smashing 2:1-winner by Mile Acimovic – a volley from some 50 metres from the goal. In Kiev, Slovenia overcame the Ukrainians and the heavy snow to secure its place at Euro 2000 with a 1:1-draw. 1999 was a lucky year for Slovenian football because the Slovenian club champions – Maribor – qualified for the UEFA Champions League group stage for the first (and so far only) time on the expense of Olympique Lyonnais. In its group, Maribor, won at Kiev vs. Dynamo in the first match and held Bayer Leverkusen to a goalless draw.
At Euro 2000 in Belgium and the Netherlands, the Slovenian team performed extremely well. In the opening match vs. Yugoslavia (composed only of present Serbia and Montenegro) the team around Zlatko Zahovic even lead 3:0 after an hour but was happy to get a point in the end (3:3). The clash against Spain in Amsterdam was historic, despite a 1:2- defeat by Slovenia. Some 14,000 Slovenian fans traveled to the Amsterdam ArenA, the highest number of Slovenian supporters ever recorded at a match (including the matches held in Slovenia). The team ended its enterprise by drawing to Norway (0:0) in Arnhem.
But this was not enough for the ambitions of Srečko Katanec and his team. In the 2002 World Cup qualification to follow the team was even more successful. It remained unbeaten throughout the qualification process, despite facing Russia, Yugoslavia and Switzerland. In the play-offs, Slovenia struck again in the same manner as two years before. In the clash with Romania, led by the legendary Gheorghe Hagi, the Slovenian team came from behind to secure a 2:1-victory in the opening home leg (again with a spectacular volley by Milan Osterc, this time in the Van-Bastenesque-style). In Bucharest it was the former Portsmouth player, Mladen Rudonja, who secured the way to Asia by scoring his first (and last) national team goal while serving his 53rd cap.
At the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan the team finally underperformed by losing all its three matches (1:3 vs. Spain and Paraguay, 0:1 vs. South Africa) because it imploded during the tournament following a severe clash between the star player, Zlatko Zahovic (who played for Valencia in the 2001 Champions league finals), and head coach Srečko Katanec. The unlucky appearance marked the end of the first golden era of the national team, although Slovenia managed to enter the play-offs for the 2004 Euro again under the new guidance of Bojan Prasnikar, the former coach of Maribor. But it failed narrowly to qualify by losing to Croatia with 1:2 on aggregate.
But the decline was only temporary and visible only on the senior national team level. A new generation of players emerged from the junior teams, the Slovenian league system was able to give them enough skill and self-confidence to search for their way and mature in the more prominent national competitions abroad. Slovenian football has proved his vitality by reaching new heights, with the participation at the 2010 FIFA World Cup celebrating the rise in the most outstanding fashion.
