The Yugoslavia national handball team was the national handball team of Yugoslavia. It was organized by the Handball Federation of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav national handball team was mostly made up of handball players from Croatia, and the rest were made up of handball players from the other republics of the then SFR Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina).
The Handball Federation of Yugoslavia (RSJ) was founded on December 17, 1949 in Belgrade by merging republican and provincial federations, and became a member of the International Handball Federation (IHF) in 1950. After the end of the Second World War, most handball players from Croatia ended up as instructors or handball referees.Some of them became members of the Yugoslav national handball team .
Field handball first match
The first international match, played on June 19, 1950 at the stadium in Kranchevicheva Street in Zagreb, against Belgium. Yugoslavia won 18:3 playing with nine players from Zagreb and one each from Split and Sarajevo.Small handball was played publicly for the first time in Yugoslav territories on February 24, 1950, in the Fair hall (today the Technical Museum) on Savska aley in Zagreb. It was the first public handball match played in the hall.
Indoor Handball
In the beginning, small handball was mainly played on open courts, and later more and more in halls. The possibility of playing in the hall and in a smaller space enabled continuous changes in the situation on the field and better contact with the spectators. That's why small handball was quickly accepted, and thus slowly supplanted big handball, which was played less and less.Until 1953, all official handball competitions in Yugoslavia were in large handball, and since then national championships in small handball have also been held. The main limiting factor in the further development of handball was football fields, whose administrations were reluctant to approve the holding of training sessions and matches. Big handball stopped being played officially in 1958. The only remaining handball, there was no longer any need to call it small handball, but simply - handball.
Yugoslavia played its first international small handball match in 1956 at the Tashmaidan Stadium in Belgrade against Sweden, the current world champions at the time. A draw was reached 6:6, and due to cloud cover the match was declared invalid. Yugoslav handball began to rise in the early 1970s reaching its hight till 1990.At the time it was the most trophy-winning handball team in the world, winning 3 medals at the Olympic Games, 4 at the World Championships, 5 at the Mediterranean Games, 1 at the Goodwill Games, 3 at the World Handball Cups and 2 at the Handball Super Leagues.The biggest successes are the gold medals at the 1972 and 1984 Olympic Games, as well as the gold medal at the 1986 World Championship.The team ceased to exist after the split in June 1991. Today, three former Yugoslav republics have won medals at major competitions: Croatia fourteen, Serbia one and Slovenia two. In the period from 2003 to 2020, Croatia was at the very top of world handball. Other former Yugoslav republics also cherish the continuity of placement in major competitions.
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