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Ivan 'Ico' Hitrec (April 13 1911 — 1946) is
widely considered as the greatest Croatian
football (soccer) player before World War II.

The centre-forward became a legend after scoring
twice against then famous Spanish keeper Ricardo
Zamora during the first night game in Zagreb
between Zagreb and Madrid in 1933. As one of the
first Croatian international players, he went on
to play for Grasshopper-Club|Grasshoppers of
Switzerland, and "Kicker (magazine)|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 Yugoslavia
national football team|Kingdom of Yugoslavia
national team. He appeared in at least 14
international games and scored 9 goals in 7 of
them.

He was also the first technical officer and in his
office in the Zagreb power-works in
Gundulićeva street, the best players from
Gradjanski|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 kick (football)|penalty kicks
because they were "too close" (to the goal). He
was able to sprints|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 link==
* http://www.nk-dinamo.hr/eng/nogometna_s.asp
Dinamo's football school "Hitrec - Kacijan"