Ivica Horvat
Croatia
16 July 1926
multiplayer
was a Croatian and Yugoslav professional football player and manager.
He spent most of his playing career in the 1940s and 1950s with Dinamo Zagreb, with whom he won two Federal League championships of Yugoslavia and one Marshal Tito Cup. Regarded as one of the best defenders in the country at the time, Horvat also earned 60 international caps for Yugoslavia, and was part of the national squad at the 1950 and 1954 World Cups, as well as the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, where they were silver medalists.
In 1957 he went abroad to join Eintracht Frankfurt, helping them win their first and only West German championship in 1959 before retiring from active football. He spent the next two decades working in club management, notably leading Dinamo Zagreb to their historic 1966β67 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup win, and also winning the 1972 DFB-Pokal with Schalke 04, the German club's first domestic trophy after a 14-year drought.
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