Let me tell you a story about a league which has 56% of home wins, which is the biggest percentage among honest leagues in the world (not counting the Bosnian-Herzegovian one, of course, which has 75%). There are many debates whether the home field advantage exists at all, and I could safely say that very few people can answer where the home field advantage (if it's not just a myth) is coming from. Usually it has something to do with psychology, especially in certain leagues where local heroes still exist and are therefore "defending" their territory. The other reason is the size of the pitch, but that matters only if the difference is noticeable, e.g. a team with a wide pitch visits a team with a narrow pitch. In all other cases, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone believes home field advantage exists, and therefore it exists; the home team and the visiting team act (field their formations) accordingly. There's absolutely no reason why a good home team shouldn't be able to establish field domination when visiting. Except the lack of self-confidence, common for younger men. Men of that age can't remain confident if the situation is making them insecure, and this one is.

But in Croatian league, the answer is much more silly. All teams, without exceptions, travel by bus early on match day to avoid going to a hotel and to save money. So, depending on the distance, they might spend up to 10 hours rocking their kidneys in a bus before they're expected to run out and beat someone in soccer. The last of such unfortunate incidents, when Inter Zapresic traveled 7 hours to meet Hajduk Split a couple of days ago, ended 7:2 for Hajduk. Apparent lack of running by Inter's players was the main reason behind the final score. A strange coincidence maybe, buy they looked like they spent the last 7 hours sitting still, watching the trees go by, and contemplating suicide.

How do the visiting teams win then, you ask? Well, most of the times (81%) they don't, and 11 out of 12 league teams has a winning home record. Let's compare the two strongest home teams, Dinamo Zagreb (12-0-1) and Slaven Belupo (11-2-0). Now, Dinamo gathered 26 points when visiting, and Slaven joined the rest of the league by gathering mere 8 points on the road. The difference? The reason why only Dinamo has a winning visiting record? Their state-of-the-art bus, which is highly comfortable. It even has beds, bathrooms, refrigerators, TV sets...you name it. It's a hotel on wheels. And the only thing disrupting the harmony of "they won't win when visiting, why should we?" mentality. If Dinamo Zagreb and Medjimurje would be taken out of the equasion, this league would have 58% home wins, leaving only 16% for the visitors. It's getting even worse, because this year, in 36 matches, there was a grand total of four visiting victories (11%), two of them coming against Medjimurje. The remaining two are Dinamo beating Rijeka on the road, and Dinamo losing to Varteks at home during the most recent manifestation of their "I don't want to play today" syndrome.

Beside the fact that this is a league of home victories, pretty much everything else is a rollercoaster. Want proof? The already mentioned Inter, who lost 7:2 to Hajduk on the road a week ago, yesterday managed to beat an excellent team, Rijeka, in a pretty impressive display. Of course, the victory came at home, and regardless of the fact that Inter scored from a free kick and a penalty kick, and Rijeka missed their own chance from the spot, Inter controlled the game. Their defensive philosophy wasn't in question even when Rijeka's Georgi Ivanov was sent off at 43rd minute for elbowing the defender. Inter thought "we have an extra player, now it's easier to play catenaccio", and didn't seem to want to cross the centre line. The stubbornness of the home coach is amazing. Perhaps that's why he managed to get sent off again, near the end of the match. By the way, both Inter and Rijeka got another red card along the way to sum up this Hollywood scenario.

Even though the new/old champion Dinamo is 19 points ahead, the league is far from being boring. Rijeka, Hajduk and Slaven Belupo are fighting for the 2nd place and all three would actually have the same number of points today if Rijeka scored their penalty kick and got a point yesterday. To add to that, the difference between 7th place and 11th place is 3 points. And, week after week, underdogs beat favorites, close games end with a big margin, "sure" bets end in an opposite result, and it's safe to say that the only way to pick a winner in this league is to call each player on his mobile phone and ask "feel like running today?". It's a hard life, can't run every week. It's enough that each and every single morning you have to - wake up. Hard life, I'm telling you.

Dan Horvat, BrainBetting.com

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