Nickname
Slovenia did not have a nickname until 30 August 2012 and was according to media the only team on World Cup 2010 without it. With the qualification on the World Cup 2010 there where attempts from the home journalists to pick the nickname for the team, but that was not well taken among the fans as most of them feel that a process to obtain a nickname should occur naturally.
Recently there were some articles abroad that suggested that the team is called The Dragons, however that is not the case in Slovenia as that is the sign only of the capital city of Ljubljana and a nickname of NK Olimpija from the same city and has nothing to do with the country itself. The idea of The Dragons is not well taken among the fans and is not used either by home media or the fans nor is it used by the fans of NK Olimpija themself. However, due to the long tradition of NK Olimpija playing in Yugoslav football league some football fans from former Yugoslav republics (Serbia) use this nickname to describe the Slovenian national team. However, things change just across the border as The Dragons is one of the nicknames that is used by Bosnian media and fans to describe their own national football team. Most of the former Yugoslav republics also uses the term fantje for the team, which literally means The Boys in Slovene language.
The generation behind coach Srečko Katanec and star player Zlatko Zahovič was and still is referred to as the golden generation.
Read more about this topic: Slovenia National Football Team
Famous quotes containing the word nickname:
“A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)