Plazma Youth Sport Games: Celebrating 30 Years of Youth Sports in Split

On a raised platform above the Adriatic, 20 children sit in a circle, heads bowed over chessboards. They are the best young players from across the Balkans, but on this hot Split afternoon they share a single opponent: Nigel Short, the grandmaster weaving his way awkwardly between chairs, making one move at each stop.

The kids are not alone. Behind them stand “celebrity coaches” – a phrase that only half captures the surreal scene. Ana Ivanovic leans in over one board. Sean Dyche, in shorts and trainers rather than a technical area tracksuit, offers a word on another. And then, the most incongruous of all: Peter Thiel, the right‑wing tech billionaire, quietly advising a prodigy on how to take on a former world title challenger.

It is all part of the Plazma Youth Sport Games (YSG), which this month marks its 30th anniversary in Split. The event has been described by some of its more illustrious guests as “the Davos of sport”, a summer gathering on the Dalmatian coast that pulls in powerbrokers from sport and politics. Strip away the gloss, though, and you find something more grounded: the largest amateur sports event for children in Europe.

Nearly half a million youngsters from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia and North Macedonia entered qualifying this year. Over one packed week in Split, they converge for finals in 10 sports – from chess and 3v3 basketball to mini‑football – with medals, friendships and bragging rights on the line. The Games sell themselves as more than competition. Organisers talk about teamwork, collaboration and, crucially, putting phones away. They call Plazma both a sports event and a “social project”.

That pitch has worked. The ambassador list reads like an improbable dinner party: Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Alastair Campbell, Slaven Bilic and more. Visitors tend to leave converted. Dyche, who has thrown himself into the role, calls the Games “a brilliant, brilliant initiative”, and keeps returning to one moment – the girls’ mini‑football final.

“It was terrific, they were playing good football; getting properly stuck into each other, properly playing,” he said. “You could feel that they felt free and were being supported in that environment.”

Dyche cannot resist a comparison with home. He doubts something of this scale and looseness could spring up in the UK. “It seems to me that every time you try and get an initiative off in England, there’s a million rules and regulations that make it difficult,” he said. “I know how hard it can be to get funding too and times are tough for people.”

The irony is that Plazma itself was born out of hard times. Zdravko Maric founded the Games in the wake of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian war. His aim was not grand diplomacy or healing a region. It was more blunt than that: tackle the drug problems ravaging Croatian youth.

“It’s a lifetime project and we live with it every day,” says his brother, Slaven Maric, who has worked on the Games from the start. “But when Zladko started it we didn’t have an idea that it would develop into this. It’s not about sport or the results, it’s about social life, it’s about being together. There were many issues with drug abuse [then], now it’s about bringing the kids to spend sometime together in real life.”

That last phrase has become a mission statement. Getting children off their phones and into the sun is a central theme for the 2026 edition. Esports companies have tried to get a foot in the door. Maric says they have been politely, but firmly, turned away.

Bringing the Games to Split added a fresh chapter to a city already obsessed with sport. With a modern population of only around 160,000, Split punches absurdly above its weight. This is the city of Goran Ivanisevic and Bernard Vukas – the latter long considered Croatia’s greatest footballer before Luka Modric rewrote the script. Its roll call stretches across disciplines: Branko Cikatic, a titan of kickboxing; Toni Kukoc, an NBA three‑peat champion with the Chicago Bulls; Stipe Bozic, the mountaineer who became a national hero.

Walk along the seafront and you find Split’s own Olympic “walk of fame”, 73 medal winners immortalised Hollywood‑style. On the shallows of the Adriatic, locals play picigin, the city’s homegrown sport, a kind of hand‑hackysack where the only real rule is to keep the ball from touching the water.

No wonder the link between Split and the Youth Sport Games feels so natural. The pride among locals is obvious. Slaven Bilic, born here, former Premier League player and manager and now an inevitable YSG ambassador, does not pretend to be neutral.

“I’m not objective because I’ve known Zdravko for more than 30 years but it’s great that at a time when there’s a lot of negativity in the world that this can exist,” Bilic said. “Especially in this part of the world that is supposed to be unstable.”

The next step looms. How big can this get? How big should it get?

One clear ambition is expansion. North Macedonia joined the competition proper for the first time this year, while Ukrainian teams arrived as invited guests. Talks are under way with six more countries about joining in future editions. The sponsorship portfolio is swelling too: Coca‑Cola, Topps and Croatian telecoms company Telemach are now on board.

Then there is the money behind the scenes. Organisers say 11 billionaires are now associated with the Games, several of whom have invested directly. One is understood to be Thiel, the PayPal and Palantir founder and mentor to JD Vance, the US vice‑president. Asked why he had chosen to take a stake in the project, Thiel declined to answer, slipping down the riviera with his security detail.

Aleksander Ceferin, the Uefa president, has fewer qualms about speaking. Uefa also provides funding to YSG, and he sees the event as proof that elite sport can funnel its riches in the right direction. He dodged questions in Split about his ongoing feud with Fifa, but his praise for the Games came loaded with implication.

“I think that top sport, and the money that you get with top competition, should be used for the development of sport and this is the development of sport,” he said, words that invite comparison with Gianni Infantino’s push to sell a stake in the World Cup to private investors.

The week closed on Friday night with a flourish: the Games’ own take on Soccer Aid. On one side, a YSG select team. On the other, 11 all‑stars, including Claude Makélélé, Pavel Nedved and Ibrahimovic. On paper, it looked like a mismatch. On the touchline, though, the local kids had Dyche barking instructions, cajoling, encouraging, demanding they “get properly stuck in”.

Bridges built, memories banked, a region’s next generation colliding in sun and saltwater. As 30th birthdays go, it felt less like a celebration of the past and more like a declaration of intent.