Franjo Wölfl

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Franjo "Mara" Wölfl - also Franjo Velfl - (born May 18, 1918 in Zagreb ; † July 8, 1987 ibid) was a Croatian football player. With the Yugoslav national team , he won Olympic silver in 1948. With Građanski and Dinamo Zagreb he was national champion. He is considered one of the most outstanding strikers in Yugoslav and Croatian football history.

career

Franjo Wölfl started playing football in 1934 at HŠK Concordia Zagreb . To train as a mechanic, he moved to Czechoslovakia in 1935, where he continued his footballing career with the then first division club SK Viktoria Plzeň . In 1938 he returned to Zagreb, where he now joined HŠK Građanski .

In December of the same year he made his debut for the Yugoslav national team in Warsaw . The Poles were already leading 2-0, but shortly before the half-time break, Wölfl was able to reduce it to 1: 2 with his first international goal. Twenty minutes before the end of the game he even gave Yugoslavia a 3-2 lead, but the host's star Ernst Willimowski was able to equalize with his second goal to make it 4: 4.

Until the brief phase of Croatian independence from 1941 until the end of World War II, he played three more games for Yugoslavia. With Građanski he won the championship of Yugoslavia in 1940 and the championship of Croatia in 1943, where he was also the top scorer with 12 goals. The club's outstanding players at the time included goalkeeper Franjo Glaser and striker Stjepan Bobek .

During the war, Wölfl played 18 times for the Croatian national team and scored 13 goals, making him the record player of that era in terms of both number of games and goals. In 2010 he was among the top 10 goalscorers in the history of the Croatian national teams.

After the end of the war and the Communist seizure of power, traditional associations such as Concordia and Građanski were dissolved. Wölfl then moved to the newly founded NK Dinamo Zagreb . With Dinamo he won the national championships of 1950 and 1951 the erstwhile after Marshal Tito named cup competition . In the finals, the Croatians defeated FK Vojvodina Novi Sad twice with 2-0. Dinamo made it into the cup final for the first time last year, but lost 3-0 to the capital city club Roter Stern after a 1: 1 in the replay. In 1947 and 1948 Wölfl was the league's top scorer with 28 and 22 goals respectively. In the 1947/48 season he scored all goals in the 4-0 win against Vardar Skopje , including a free kick converted from 45 meters. In total, he scored 79 league goals for Dinamo by his departure in 1953. Dinamo's attacking trio of the era Ratko Kacijan - Franjo Wölfl - Željko Čajkovski is fondly remembered to this day.

From 1946 he was called back to the national team of the newly formed Yugoslavia, with which he took part in the 1948 Olympic Games in London . He contributed one goal each to the quarter-finals and semi-finals against Turkey and Great Britain, which he won 3-1. But he was not in the list of the team with the stars in the finals to Gunnar Nordahl , Gunnar Gren and Nils Liedholm been beaten Sweden with 1: subject to third In May 1951 he played his last of a total of 12 internationals for Yugoslavia, in which he scored 6 goals.

In 1954 he was a member of the selection committee of the Yugoslav Football Association as part of the preparations for the 1954 World Cup and in 1956 was one of the three coaches who supervised the Croatian selection in a game they won 5-2 against Indonesia. He also held numerous positions at Dinamo Zagreb, where he retired from the position of technical director in 1973 after 27 years with the club.

Statistical career overview

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personal data
SURNAME Wölfl, Franjo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Velfl, Franjo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Croatian-Yugoslav soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Zagreb , Yugoslavia
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1987
Place of death Zagreb , Yugoslavia