Croatia is the most successful exporter of football players in the world per capita, a recent report by the Swiss International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) confirmed.
In absolute terms, Croatia ranks a high tenth on the world list.
It is therefore not surprising that this country with a population of around 3,8 million, roughly the size of Berlin, has convincingly risen to the top of the world's football talent production. In this decade alone, 855 Croatian players have played for foreign clubs, a feat many happily attribute to God-given talent.
Others would say that Croatian footballers are developing not thanks to the system that supports them, but in spite of it. The catastrophic infrastructure is often mentioned, primarily the playing fields throughout Croatia, or the first league clubs that sometimes do not have enough money to pay salaries.
The state has not yet managed, if it wants to at all, to deal with the criminal networks of certain managers and referees or club officials, but exports are still not slowing down.
Record player exports and a flood of talent
While the magical predestination of Croats for football is being glorified, it is worth looking at the other side of the coin.
"It's true, we are undoubtedly a global phenomenon, but repeating that will not solve the problems that are piling up," Mario Jurić, president of the Croatian Football Union (HUNS), the only sports union organization in Croatia, told us on this topic.
"You know, the last generation we followed," Jurić continues, "only 75 out of 1.057 made it from junior to senior. That's a talent plague!"
"In other words, we have a huge space for even greater progress, and not just talking about how many are going abroad. And it's not just a problem of infrastructure. If it were, rich countries would be ahead of us in terms of player development."
The president of HUNS notes that it is important to provide young players with different life opportunities so that they remain in professional training. The highest percentage of dropouts is recorded between the ages of 18 and 22.
Trade union training for a second career
HUNS focuses on supporting second careers, after the end of playing, or competitive, careers.
"However, you don't retire at 35 or 36, and that's when football players stop playing. We want them to be able to expect better integration into society. When you have that perspective at 20, it's easier to decide to continue playing football," says Jurić.
HUNS has therefore dedicated itself to encouraging the establishment of special studies for players, in contact with various higher education institutions. Not only in Croatia — a study of sports management for Croatian players, thanks to HUNS, was also conducted in Denmark for a time.
The cooperation with the Danish government has not been continued for now, but it certainly makes sense to push something similar even more strongly in Croatia itself. According to Marko Jurić, a number of Croatian players have already completed additional education within this framework.
In any case, young people in sports should not feel primarily like commodities on the market. And that is exactly what the situation with the enormous export of football players boils down to, if it is not accompanied by human care for them.
Football commentator Juraj Vrdoljak points out for DW that clubs lack development plans, even those that are declaratively development-oriented. "The problem of infrastructure and the lack of a set development strategy has only been partially solved by a slightly increased volume of investments," Vrdoljak says of the recent period in Croatia.
Commercialization of sports development
"But there is still a strong impression that these infrastructure investments," he adds, "are only taking place according to periodic and primarily cosmetic needs. I would especially highlight as a niche of this problem the increasingly present limitation of the original formative element in the development of young athletes, which is the playing platform."
Due to the wave of commercialization and the lack of basic, traditionally public facilities such as playgrounds or swimming pools, children do not have a playground to develop what is crucial — which, in this analyst's opinion, is a love of play and recreation, along with elementary motor skills.
"The development of young footballers today is shaped by the dictates of profitability, where those who can afford the demands of serious development — which includes expensive individual programs with personal trainers, rehabilitation programs and more — have the upper hand when creating a club development plan," says Vrdoljak.
Furthermore, in youth sports, children whose talent has market potential that will bring profit tomorrow have an advantage. Vrdoljak believes that it is no coincidence that the phenomenon of glorifying so-called celebrity agents, supposedly miracle workers, subsequently appeared on the Croatian market.
The price of children's health
The public in Croatia is largely uncritical about cases like the one Vrdoljak cites. This is the example of Belinj, a seventeen-year-old boy from Brazil who was brought to Dinamo Zagreb at the age of 14 and was recently transferred to second-league club Kustošija.
"Belinja then took the most glamorous domestic football agent, Andy Bara, under his management wing. His talent is being used through the prism of predetermined profitability, albeit in a slightly different way than Bara's predecessors, who are now fugitives from justice," this interviewee summarizes.
"But the logic is the same: there is no price for the healthy mental and physical development of talented, let alone other children, that will outweigh the price of forced transfers and the profits they 'must' bring," concludes Juraj Vrdoljak.
A significant part of the football industry in Croatia is based on the production of personnel with minimal investment for maximum profit. Such an approach can bring exceptional material benefits, but human resources also have their limits — at least if society wants a healthy mind, not just a healthy body.
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