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Stjepan Lamza (23 January 1940 – 12 January 2022) was a Croatian
footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...
who played as a
midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...
. He is considered one of the greatest Croatian players of all time and played for much of his career for
Dinamo Zagreb Građanski nogometni klub Dinamo Zagreb ( en, Dinamo Zagreb Citizens' Football Club, link=yes, italics=yes), commonly referred to as GNK Dinamo Zagreb or simply Dinamo Zagreb (), is a Croatian professional football club based in Zagreb. Dinamo ...
, whom he helped in winning the
Inter-Cities Fairs Cup The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, sometimes referred to as the European Fairs Cup, Fairs Cities' Cup, or simply as the Fairs Cup, was a European Association football, football competition played between 1955 and 1971. It is often considered the predecess ...
in 1967. He made seven appearances for Yugoslavia national team.


Club career

Lamza started his career in his hometown Sisak where he played for a local club
Segesta Segesta ( grc-gre, Ἔγεστα, ''Egesta'', or , ''Ségesta'', or , ''Aígesta''; scn, Siggésta) was one of the major cities of the Elymians, one of the three indigenous peoples of Sicily. The other major cities of the Elymians were Eryx a ...
and later transferred to a Slovenian club Branik Maribor. It was in Branik when his talent was spotted by, then Yugoslav giants,
Dinamo Zagreb Građanski nogometni klub Dinamo Zagreb ( en, Dinamo Zagreb Citizens' Football Club, link=yes, italics=yes), commonly referred to as GNK Dinamo Zagreb or simply Dinamo Zagreb (), is a Croatian professional football club based in Zagreb. Dinamo ...
and he soon moved there. It was in Zagreb where Lamza made his name and he played a total of 281 games for ''the blues'', scoring 72 goals in the process. He is considered one of the greatest Croatian football players of all time and a leader of Dinamo's golden generation that won the
Inter-Cities Fairs Cup The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, sometimes referred to as the European Fairs Cup, Fairs Cities' Cup, or simply as the Fairs Cup, was a European Association football, football competition played between 1955 and 1971. It is often considered the predecess ...
in 1967 and was runner-up four years earlier in 1963. It was in 1967 and the age of only 27 when his career made a dramatic twist as Lamza was involved in an accident that prevented him in reaching football greatness. After the 1967 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup semifinal against
Eintracht Frankfurt Eintracht Frankfurt e.V. () is a professional sports club based in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. It is best known for its football club, which was founded on 8 March 1899. The team is currently playing in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the Germa ...
, when Dinamo managed to overturn their first leg defeat in Germany (3–0) with a home victory (4–0) after
extra time Overtime or extra time is an additional period of play specified under the rules of a sport to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played onl ...
, he and his teammates went on to celebrate the victory to a luxury restaurant, that lasted late into the night. The next morning Lamza woke up early in the morning in one of the rooms upstairs and found a bar in the lobby below that was empty and started drinking. When other teammates and guest started to wake up they found Lamza drunk in the lobby and one of Dinamo's officials (Karlo Žagar) ordered the waitress to take him back to his room so others would not see him in the state he was in. She has done just that and took Lamza to his bed and then locked the door of the room. Later, when Lamza woke up, he was still intoxicated and found the doors locked and went into the balcony where he fell down, hitting the chair with his shoulder and a concrete floor with the right side of his head. He was immediately rushed to a hospital where he stayed for 40 days and was diagnosed with a severe head fracture and most importantly the damage to his nerve center that hurt his center of balance, which subsequently affected his career as Lamza never demonstrated the level of football he did prior to the accident. He followed the final of the 1967 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (won by Dinamo) by a radio broadcast from a hospital room in
Bled Bled (; german: Veldes,''Leksikon občin kraljestev in dežel zastopanih v državnem zboru,'' vol. 6: ''Kranjsko''. 1906. Vienna: C. Kr. Dvorna in Državna Tiskarna, p. 146. in older sources also ''Feldes'') is a town on Lake Bled in the Upper C ...
. It was this accident that shattered his dreams of playing top football abroad as just after the historic return leg against Eintracht and hours before the accident itself he had immediately signed a contract with Belgian club
Standard Liège Royal Standard de Liège, commonly referred to as Standard Liège (; nl, Standard Luik ; german: Standard Lüttich ) or simply Standard in Belgium, is a Belgian professional football club based in the city of Liège. They are one of the most ...
worth $280,000 (around 1.8 million in 2010s currency), which was a huge amount of money for a player at that time. With his accident and injuries the contract was then never carried out. Lamza returned to football one year later but was not given a chance by the new coach of Dinamo, Ivica Horvat. He made his final appearance for Dinamo on 21 April 1970 on a farewell match, organized by the club, that was played against Benfica and their star player
Eusébio Eusébio da Silva Ferreira (; 25 January 1942 – 5 January 2014), nicknamed the "Black Panther", the "Black Pearl" or "O Rei" ("The King"), was a Portuguese footballer who played as a striker. He is considered one of the greatest players of ...
. Dinamo won the match 2–0, with Lamza scoring the first goal. Later he had a couple of unsuccessful and short lived spells at clubs home and abroad (
Châteauroux Châteauroux (; ; oc, Chasteurós) is the capital city of the French department of Indre, central France and the second-largest town in the province of Berry, after Bourges. Its residents are called ''Castelroussins'' () in French. Climate ...
,
Rijeka Rijeka ( , , ; also known as Fiume hu, Fiume, it, Fiume ; local Chakavian: ''Reka''; german: Sankt Veit am Flaum; sl, Reka) is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia (after Zagreb and Split). It is located in Primor ...
, 1860 München, Melbourne Croatia), but never fully demonstrated the level of football he did prior to the accident. He returned to football at the beginning of the nineties as a Dinamo's scout.


International career

Lamza made his debut for
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
in an October 1963
friendly match An exhibition game (also known as a friendly, a scrimmage, a demonstration, a preseason game, a warmup match, or a preparation match, depending at least in part on the sport) is a sporting event whose prize money and impact on the player's or ...
away against
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
and earned a total of only 7 caps, scoring no goals. The reason for so few caps being the accident and the supposed discrimination of Dinamo's players at the time. His final international was a May 1967 European Championship qualification match away against
Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...
.


Personal life and death

Lamza once stated that he was probably saved when Dinamo's
patronage Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes, and the wealthy have provided to artists su ...
Zdravko Mamić Zdravko Mamić (born 16 July 1959) is a Croatian former football administrator and sports agent. From 2003 to 2016, he was the executive director of Croatian football club GNK Dinamo Zagreb. Mamić also worked as an advisor at NK Lokomotiva a ...
and head coach at the time
Miroslav Blažević Miroslav "Ćiro" Blažević (; born 10 February 1935) is a Croatian former professional football manager and player. His professional playing career spanned from 1954 to 1966, during which he played for Dinamo Zagreb, Lokomotiva Zagreb, FK Saraje ...
offered him to work for the club, at the beginning of the nineties, as he had only around
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...
200 of
pension A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...
from which he did not know how he would have been able to survive. He stated that he saw
Luka Modrić Luka Modrić (; born 9 September 1985) is a Croatian professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for La Liga club Real Madrid and captains the Croatia national team. He plays mainly as a central midfielder, but can also play as an a ...
as his successor due to his similar style of playing and physique. He died on 12 January 2022, at the age of 81.


Honours

Dinamo Zagreb * Yugoslav Football Cup: 1963, 1965, *
Inter-Cities Fairs Cup The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, sometimes referred to as the European Fairs Cup, Fairs Cities' Cup, or simply as the Fairs Cup, was a European Association football, football competition played between 1955 and 1971. It is often considered the predecess ...
: 1966–67


References


External links

*
Stjepan Lamza
at Reprezentacija.rs {{DEFAULTSORT:Lamza, Stjepan 1940 births 2022 deaths People from Sisak Association football midfielders Yugoslav footballers Yugoslavia international footballers HNK Segesta players GNK Dinamo Zagreb players HNK Rijeka players NK Zagreb players LB Châteauroux players Melbourne Knights FC players Yugoslav Second League players Yugoslav First League players Ligue 2 players Yugoslav expatriate footballers Expatriate footballers in France Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in France Expatriate soccer players in Australia Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Australia