Igor Cvitanović

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Igor Cvitanović (born 1 November 1970) is a retired Croatian football striker. He is currently the all-time top goalscorer of the Croatian First League with a total of 126 goals scored. He also scored 122 domestic league goals for Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb, 117 of which were in the Croatian First League.

He was born in Osijek and started his professional career at Dinamo Zagreb in 1989, appearing during his first season in ten Yugoslav First League matches and scoring five goals for the club in the league. He was subsequently loaned on Varteks Varaždin during the first season of then newly founded Croatian First League in the spring of 1992. At Varteks, he made 21 domestic league appearances in which he scored nine goals, returning to Dinamo in the summer of 1992. He went on to make his international debut for the Croatian national team in a friendly match against Mexico on October 22, 1992 in Zagreb. He scored his first international goals with a brace against Israel in a friendly match played on August 17, 1994 in Tel Aviv. Cvitanović was also part of the Croatian national team at the Euro 1996 finals in England, but did not play any matches at the tournament and he previously made only one appearance in the qualifying as a stoppage-time substitute.

Between 1992 and 1997, Cvitanović played for Dinamo Zagreb in five and half seasons and became the top goalscorer of the Croatian First League in two consecutive seasons, scoring 19 goals in the 1995-96 season and 20 goals in the following 1996-97 season. He was also the league's second best goalscorer in the 1993-94 season with 27 goals scored in 34 league matches, but his then-teammate Goran Vlaović scored 29 goals and was therefore the league's top goalscorer. Cvitanović also scored nine goals in 14 league matches in the autumn of 1997 before leaving Dinamo for his first foreign engagement at Real Sociedad from Spain with the beginning of the year 1998. However, two years previously he had been set to join Bryan Robson's Middlesbrough in a deal worth up to a million pounds. This deal was unfortunately scuppered by his failure to attain a work permit. By the time he left Dinamo, he scored a total of 104 domestic league goals for the club and became their most successful goalscorer of all times.

Cvitanović also made six appearances for the Croatian national team in the qualifying session for the 1998 World Cup, but was dismissed from the 22-man squad for the finals in France a couple of weeks before the beginning of the tournament due to differences of opinion between him and coach Miroslav Blažević. He subsequently made only six appearances for the national team in friendly matches played in the spring of 1999, playing his last international match against Korea Republic at the Korea Cup tournament on June 19, 1999 in Seoul. He scored his last international goal in Croatia's first match at the same tournament, against Egypt on June 13, 1999. In all, he won a total of 27 international caps and scored four goals for Croatia.

At club level, he did not have much success at Real Sociedad and left the club in 1999 after only one and half season, making 29 La Liga appearances in which he managed to score only three goals. He returned to Dinamo Zagreb and continued to play for the club until 2002. He subsequently played one season at Japanese club Shimizu S-Pulse and returned to Croatia by signing with Osijek for the 2003-04 season, after which he retired from playing football.

	Croatia squad - 1996 European Championship
1 Ladić | 2 Jurčević | 3 Jarni | 4 Štimac | 5 Jerkan | 6 Bilić | 7 Asanović | 8 Prosinečki | 9 Šuker | 10 Boban | 11 Bokšić | 12 Mrmić | 13 Stanić | 14 Soldo | 15 Pavličić | 16 Mladenović | 17 Pamić | 18 Brajković | 19 Vlaović | 20 Šimić | 21 Cvitanović | 22 Gabrić | Coach: Blažević