Kustosija

In the space of three years a Zagreb club that has spent most of its recent history in the third and fourth tiers sold three teenagers to clubs most Croatian sides never sell to. Mikayil Faye went to FC Barcelona in 2023, Dino Klapija followed to RB Leipzig in 2024 for €5.2 million, and in 2025 Lovro Chelfi joined Barcelona's under-19 side. None of that money came from European football; it came from a scouting system built at a club still playing in front of a couple of thousand people.

The club was founded on 15 July 1929 as Sportski klub Metalac, and its name changed with the political map around it — Fizkulturno društvo Metalac in 1945, then Sportsko and Radničko sportsko društvo Metalac through the decades that followed. Only in 1993 did it take the name NK Kustošija, after the neighbourhood it represents. The ground it still plays on dates to a 1964 merger with the local club Sloboda, which brought Metalac the pitch on Sokolska ulica.

Otto Barić spent two seasons there as a player, from 1955 to 1957, before going on to coach Dinamo Zagreb, Hajduk Split and the Croatian national team. Under president Vladimir Babić, appointed in 2012, Kustošija climbed from the fourth division to the second-tier 1. NL by 2021, only to lose a promotion play-off to HNK Orijent 1919 in 2024 and drop back down. In between, in 2026, it won the Zagreb Football Association Cup.

Home games are played at Stadion Kustošija, a ground that holds 2,550, where the red and white of the "Kustosi" is about the only thing that hasn't changed since 1929.