Gorica

Velika Gorica's team sit in the Premijer liga and the ABA League Second Division, a place they reached the hard way, through two promotions rather than one straight climb. The first came in 2013/14, when Gorica topped the A-2 Liga Central and left the second tier for the top flight for the first time. The second came four seasons later, in 2017/18, and that one is the number worth keeping: 22 wins from 22 games, a perfect run through the second-tier league that sent them up again.

The club did not start out as Gorica at all. Nikola and Juraj Hrvačić, Stjepan Črnjak, Zlatko Božić and Zoran Galeković put it together in 1969 with backing from the Velika Gorica Fire Department, and it went by Gorički omladinski košarkaški klub before three renamings, Radnik, then Media, then Gorica again from 1997. Black and orange have stayed constant through the name changes, and so has a second nickname alongside Goričani: Bikovi, the Bulls.

The academy has done more for the club's name than the trophy cabinet has. Mario Kasun turned professional there in 1996/97 before a career that took him well beyond Croatia, and both Ivica Zubac and Ante Žižić came up through the same youth system, Zubac returning on loan from Cibona for the 2015/16 season. A Croatian Cup has never followed any of it.

Locally, the fixture that matters is against Sesvete, the Sesvetsko-gorički derbi, fought out mostly at youth and lower senior level rather than at the top of the table. Home games are played in front of a few hundred people at the City Sports Hall, a ground built for around 300 seats that can be pushed to a thousand when temporary stands go in and the town turns out.