- Ico Hitrec
Ivan 'Ico' Hitrec (
April 13 1911 – 1946) is widely considered as the greatestCroatia n football player beforeWorld War II .The centre-forward became a legend after scoring twice against then famous Spanish keeper
Ricardo Zamora during the first night game inZagreb between Zagreb andMadrid in 1933. As one of the first Croatian international players, he went on to play for Grasshoppers ofSwitzerland , and "Kicker", at the time the foremost sports journal in Europe, chose him as a member of the European elite 11.Hitrec was also a goal-scorer for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia national team. He appeared in at least 14 international games and scored 9 goals in 7 of them. He was one of seven Croatian players to boycott the Yugoslavian national team at the
1930 FIFA World Cup after theFootball Association of Yugoslavia was moved fromZagreb toBelgrade .He was also the first technical officer and in his office in the Zagreb power-works in Gundulićeva street, the best players from Građanski met and discussed forming a new club with blue shirts which later became
Dinamo Zagreb .Hitrec was quoted as saying that he didn't like to perform 11m penalty kicks because they were "too close" (to the goal). He was able to sprint 100 meters in under 12 seconds which was quite fast given that the fastest sprinter at the time
Jesse Owens ran the 100-meter dash in 10.30 seconds.External links
* [http://www.nk-dinamo.hr/eng/nogometna_s.asp Dinamo's football school "Hitrec - Kacijan"]
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