Legendary Dinamo captain Slaven Zambata passes away at age of 80

Slaven Zambata, a celebrated Croatian football player and Olympian, and captain of the legendary Dinamo generation, which won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1967, died in Split on Thursday at the age of 80.

Slaven Zambata was born on September 24, 1940 in Sinj, where he started his playing career in the younger squads of FC Junak, for whose senior team he played from 1958 to 1959, when he moved to Dinamo Zagreb, where he played from 1959 to 1969. In that decade, Zambata played 397 games in a blue jersey and scored 264 goals and won four Yugoslav Cups in the 1959/60, 1962/63, 1964/65 and 1968/69 seasons.

As Dinamo captain, Zambata led the team that in the 1966/67 season won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which he contributed to by scoring six goals. He left Dinamo in 1969 to join the Belgian clubs Waregem (1969-1971) and Crossing Club (1971-1972), after which he returned to Dinamo, where he ended his playing career in 1973, after several meniscus operations on both legs.

From 1962 to 1968, he played 31 games for the Yugoslav national team and scored 21 goals. He made his debut in Leipzig on September 16, 1962 in a friendly match against German Democratic Republic, scoring the first goal for Yugoslavia in the 20th minute in a match that ended with a score of 2: 2. He said goodbye to the national team jersey in Belgrade on October 27, 1968 in the qualifying match for the World Cup against the Spanish national team (0: 0).

Zambata was also the captain of the Yugoslav national team at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964, he graduated from the Faculty of Law and the Higher Coaching School.

Source: HRT