Meet the drunkest footballer ever: Breakfast booze, night-long sessions and pre-game liquor

Going hard over home

Lamza’s outrageous off-pitch reputation later overshadowed everything they did, but it’s clear that the drinking culture was there before he arrived. He will never blame peer pressure or reveal names of his accomplices in particular events, though he was rarely alone.

By late 1961, Lamza not only rose through the ranks to earn a place in the starting line-up, but also became part of the ‘hip’ Zagreb crowd. When Dinamo played Barcelona (in the return leg of the Fairs Cup, having lost the first match 5-1) just before Christmas, he showed up at the Maksimir Stadium just 10 minutes before kick-off. He was hammered.

^{Lamza (right) made 127 appearances for Dinamo}

“That day, a team-mate and I made an early start in one cafe near the ground,” Lamza recalls. “We’d been drinking since before lunch. Then he started feeling unwell and I told him he needed to stop. So he left – they later found him sleeping on the street. I stayed, although I was aware the people from the club were probably looking for me all over the city by then. In the end I showed up just in time and scored two beautiful goals in that match that we drew 2-2.”

This became a recurring pattern. There were stories of Lamza drinking two litres of hard liquor before one match or hiding in the cellar of his favourite bar ‘Splendid’ when Dinamo sent someone to bring him to practice. One time, he was so wasted that he didn’t know where he was or who he was playing. “We were standing in the tunnel, preparing to enter the pitch,” says Rudi Belin, a great defender of the ’60s.

“I was concentrating, thinking about the player I was required to mark when Stef came to me and asked: ‘Who are we playing, mate?’ He was dead serious. The opponents that day were none other than Red Star Belgrade, and the match was played at their Marakana Stadium in front of 100,000 people. Lamza scored twice and asked the coach to take him off at half-time."

“I’m not sure Belin and I are talking about the same game,” says Lanza, struggling to recall the details. “But I did once score two against them at the Marakana and asked to be subbed off. I meant no harm, I just thought someone else should get the chance. Why should I play all the time? It didn’t seem fair to the others.”

^{Lamza insists he asked to be withdrawn so that one of his team-mates could play instead}

Carefree he may be

To Lamza, football was – above all – fun. And it showed on the pitch: his style was playful and entertaining, which made him a huge crowd favourite. He didn’t always play drunk (“Sometimes I was hungover,” he once joked), but by today’s standards he would have been judged a raging alcoholic and immediately sent to rehab. Dinamo tolerated his escapades to a much larger extent than they probably should have, but they knew what he was worth to them and were always afraid of losing him to their rivals.

Besides, these were the 1960s, when much of continental football was still very romantic and played at a slower tempo; players had much more space and time at their disposal, so individual skill was of far greater importance than it became after pressing and all-out running were fully adopted into the game.

Dinamo players’ touch and technique clearly weren’t affected too much by their lifestyle, because they were doing extremely well on the pitch. From 1963 to 1966 they appeared in four consecutive cup finals and won two (in 1963 and in 1965); they reached the Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final in 1961 and Fairs Cup final in 1963, when they lost to Valencia.

^{Despite their off-field antics, Dinamo Zagreb (in the darker colours) were successful in the 1960s}

They also had five second-place and three third-place league finishes in that decade. Maybe they could have done even better if they had been more professional, but their bohemian character was a part of the charm.

Lamza regularly produced captivating displays. He also began receiving call-ups to the national team – but he wasn’t very keen on playing for Yugoslavia. “I saw some things I didn’t like,” he explains. “Some players were favoured over me and I was a misfit.

A couple of times, I made up a reason to leave. Once I even intentionally injured myself so that I could be sent back to Zagreb – I didn’t enjoy being part of that team and would much rather play five-a-side with friends in my neighbourhood.”

Although he was a big star, he only won seven caps for Yugoslavia.