I've already said Rog is more popular in Slovenia than Pog and you laughed at me.
It's not hard to understand. Slovenia is small and was not very succesfull in cycling despite cycling being a very popular activity. Winning a stage in any GT would be huge, winning the whole race was not remotely possible.
Then this humble (very important) guy Roglič shows up. Late boomer after ski jumping career ended with a crash (also important). He was competitive in road cycling like no one from Slovenia ever was. Country went insane. He started to win stages, 1 week races. And than Vuelta happened.
Slovenia had a cycling god that had it all to go for the grail that everybody knew. The Tour. While this guy was falling, crashing, winning and kept the whole country glued to the tv, another cycling guy showed up. He was really good, really quick. So quick that most simply missed him while rooting for Roglič. Yep, it was Pog.
But it was Roglič time to shine and to achieve the grail. Pog was so young and everybody (including Roglič i asure you) underestimated him and thought his time will come after Roglič rides in the sunset with Tour on his shoulder.
Country was ready for the ultimate Rog win. And than he got destroyed in the last day by... Pog. Country colapsed. There was uproar, articles, tv interviews... National hero got beaten by the other Slovenian.
It's like you work your ass of for years to get that promotion and than some young chump gets it months after coming into the company. Maybe he was simply better, sure, but you don't feel better about it either.
There are many simmilar stories in Slovenia. In ski jumping (funny isn't it) for example P. Prevc had a chance to win a world series trophy in the last match of the year at home in Planica, Slovenia. I think he needed to to win the last jump and his oponent needed to be. worse then 5th place. Everything went great, oponent did a bad jump and Prevc was leading the comp. with only one competitor left. It was another Slovenian, Tepeš.
Well, Tepeš jumped, defeated Prevc and won the match while Prevc lost a best in season trophy. That made Tepeš villian nr. 1.
So yeah, it's not easy to understand why less succesfull rider is more popular then more succesfull one in it's home country. You should be there when everyone, including neighbours grandma and dog were ready to celebrate Roglič TdF triumph and never got it, because Pog got there first.
Most are over this by now. But i still say Pog can win 5 more Tours and no one will care. If Rog wins one, country will explode.
That will probably never happen so let's enjoy it while it lasts because when these two stop racing, Slovenia goes back to cycling dark ages.