The Slovenia national football team

The Slovenia national football team is the national football team of Slovenia and is entirely controlled by the Football Association of Slovenia. The head coach of this team is Matjaž Kek and Robert Koren> is the captain of this team.

The first match of Slovenia was in 1992 after they were separated from Yugoslavia in 1991. In 2000, the team beat Ukraine at the UEFA Euro in a playoff. Later on, this team drew with Norway and Yugoslavia, but lost to Spain by 2-1. In their entire qualifying campaign they did not lose a single match and achieved recording six victory and six draws. But they did not score any points in the final group stage.

Prior to their independence in 1991, the Slovenian national team was known as a regional team which was not officially recognized by FIFA. However, this team did have a similar status as the Kosovo national football team or the Catalonia national football team. The Slovenian player’s uniform was traditional colors of white, blue and red. Post independence, the team was recognized by UEFA and FIFA.

Stadion Ljudski vrt and Športni park Stožice along with other stadiums are the home stadiums of this team. Though the team does not have their own stadium, they were rotated among many stadiums across the country. Till date, the team has played 8 home matches in different cities. The present policy of this team is that the home matches are fairly distributed among the two biggest cities in the country, Maribor and Ljubljana along with Celje for future tournaments. Four main stadiums in three different cities where the team has or will play their matches include Stadion Bezigrad, Stadion Ljudski vrt, Areno Petrol and Sportni park Stozice.

The present kit provided of this team is Nike which has a contract until 2012. Prior to this provider, past kit providers include Adidas, Kappa and Uhisport.

Major Achievements

The maximum caps and goals till date have been achieved by Zlatko Zahovic with 80 appearances along with 35 goals.

Even though the team failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2006, they were the only team to have defeated the ultimate winners, Italy with 1-0 when they hosted the tournament.