Yesterday will end the first round of the UEFA Champions League group stage. London's Arsenal will start their season in Europe by traveling to Zagreb, where they will face the local Dinamo club. The portal Eurofootball.com invites you to get to know more about tonight's opponents of the "Gunners". Most successful club in Croatia If you are looking for leagues where several teams would fight for the title until the last days of the season, the Croatian league is definitely not for you. In recent decades, Dinamo Zagreb's dominance in the highest division of Croatian football has been such a common phenomenon that any other championship outcome is practically unbelievable. The 2004-05 season was the last time when another team triumphed in the Croatian championship. It was then Split's Hajduk club. Since then, Dinamo has won 10 league titles and also a good share of the country's cups. The club has been managed by Zdravko Mamic since 2003. In terms of titles, his tenure seems very successful, and fans should really like such a successful owner. However, the situation is by no means like that. Arrested authority Zd. Mamic is one of the most controversial figures in Croatia in general, not to mention Croatian football. He has so many enemies in the country's football that it would be harder to count them than to find a needle in a haystack. We can count the opponents only in groups, not individually. We have no doubt that probably all other Croatian football club fans do not like him. His own fans don't like him (to tell the truth, it's hard to describe "Dinamo" fans' attitude towards Zd. Mamic. "Don't like" probably doesn't fully explain it), journalists, as well as law enforcement. Zd. Mamic's most famous friend is his brother Zoran Mamic, who was appointed as the head coach of Dinamo in 2013. Zd. Mamic often clashed with coaches. Under his leadership, the club replaced a whole range of specialists until putting his brother in the coach's chair. This, of course, won't cause such winds as others certainly will, so he is a favorable coach for the authorities. The name "Mamic" has become not only almost synonymous with the Zagreb Dinamo club itself but also with corruption in football. "Dinamo" fans are convinced that the club is needed by Zd. Mamic for dishonest personal intentions. By selling the best players of the club and creating a real carousel of corruption and money laundering around him, involving various corrupted representatives of the federation and financiers, the president personally profits from sales. Zd. Mamic has good skills as a criminal - Zagreb's Dinamo is allegedly an organization belonging to the members, but such status simply masks his influence in the club. Everyone knows perfectly who has absolute and unquestionable power in the club, and the alleged club "members" have no power. However, the Mamic's hegemony in Zagreb is not going smoothly now, as law enforcement has finally intervened in their affairs. On July 4th, the brothers were arrested on suspicion of tax evasion and aiding and abetting, and Dinamo fans started hoping that things had reached a turning point. The Mamic brothers are now released on bail, and their fate will be explained later. Talent factory Despite the relatively small population of the country, Croatia almost always has top-level footballers. And Dinamo Zagreb is one of the largest talent factories, which not only nurtures its own but often also discovers other players who later move abroad for good money. The diamond of Dinamo's academy is undoubtedly Luka Modric, but a whole series of other players have grown up here, without which the current Croatian national team would be unimaginable. Among other players are names like Dejan Lovren, Milan Badelj, Vedran Corluka, Mateo Kovacic, Niko Kranjcar, Sime Vrsaljko, and others. Whether it is the ability to attract the best young talents in Croatia or high-level training or opportunities provided to young players to play - Zagreb's Dinamo does something very well in raising young talents. This club's academy is undoubtedly one of the most productive in all of Europe. It's no wonder that Zd. Mamic clings to this money-making machine. How will they set up? There are so many behind-the-scenes games in Dinamo Zagreb's club, and their dominance in the league is such that you can forget that this club is playing football at all. Zo. Mamic follows modern football trends and most often relies on a 4-3-3 formation. The wingers here are the team captain Domagoj Antolic and the team's attacking star, the Chilean Angelo Henriquez, who was fully bought out from Manchester United this summer. Last year, playing on loan in Dinamo, he scored 30 goals in 37 matches in all competitions. Dinamo can boast a 41-game unbeaten streak, which started last November, but at the same time, the Croats have never won a Champions League group stage match. Getting to the quarterfinals in a group with Arsenal and Bayern, without sugarcoating it, is essentially impossible for Dinamo, so their primary goal this year should be to finally win a group stage match and perhaps fight for a place in the Europa League. Dinamo's lineup for the match against Arsenal:
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