Ivan Gudelj, a legend of Hajduk and Croatian football, has passed away

At the age of 67, Ivan Gudelj, a legend of Hajduk and Croatian football, has passed away.

The former Hajduk football player lost his battle with a severe illness.

The never-forgotten "Beckenbauer from Zmijavci" was born on April 21, 1960, in Imotski, but spent his entire childhood in Zmijavci. He left an enormous mark on Hajduk, playing for the club from 1977 to 1986. He spent his entire career playing for Hajduk, recording 362 appearances and scoring 93 goals. However, offers from the world's biggest clubs were on the table. With the "Whites" (Bijeli), he won the Yugoslav championship title in 1979 as well as two cups, and he was one of the pillars of the generation that played on equal footing with the biggest European clubs in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, at just 26 years of age, a severe illness cut his professional career short.

It was on September 13, 1986, during a match against Red Star Belgrade, when Ivan Gudelj collapsed onto the pitch. Although there were all kinds of rumors in Split's insider circles, the truth was the worst kind—Hepatitis B. Happy news arrived many years later, in the summer of 2023, when results from the Clinical Hospital Center (KBC) Split showed that his HBsAg was negative, as was his PCR HBV DNA. At the same time, the Croatian Society for Liver Diseases "Hepatos" announced that everything indicated Gudelj had overcome the infection he had fought against for 37 years.

As captain in 1979, he led the Yugoslavia youth national team to the European throne, and later became the youngest captain of Yugoslavia in history. How good he truly was is best illustrated by the fact that the French newspaper L'Équipe included him in the best team of the 1982 World Cup, even though his journey at that tournament ended in the group stage.

After the early conclusion of his professional career, he stayed involved in football—first as a coach, and then as an instructor and manager of the youth selections for the Croatian national team. He managed Primorac from Stobreč, Zadar, Austria's Vorwärts Steyr, Dubrovnik, as well as the U-16 and U-17 selections, and the Croatian U-21 national team.

Source: HRT