Our celebrated footballer and coach, one of the symbols of the club of Zagreb's Purgers, our dear and unforgettable Rudolf Belin, left us forever on 3 November 2025, the day before his 83rd birthday.

Our Rudi followed every development at his dearest club in detail until the very last moment. He lived every match with visible emotion and watched over the results and every move of his successors in the blue jersey. That love bound us until the final day.

He is one of Dinamo's greatest players of all time, a footballer with style, and one of the key figures of the celebrated generation that won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1967, a competition that later grew into the UEFA Cup, today's Europa League.

Belin was a gentleman of our football. That is what the media and the fans called him, and it was the affectionate name given to him by teammates and opponents alike. He was a football aesthete who, over the course of his career, tried his hand at almost every role except goalkeeper. Even when he played in central defence, he won the ball back elegantly, without fouling.

He was born in Zagreb on 4 November 1942, the youngest of three brothers. The eldest, Roland, ended his career relatively early, while Bruno was one of the football stars of the league at the time and Rudi's first role model, in sport as well as in life. Sadly, Bruno Belin died in a traffic accident when he was just under 33 years old.

After "training" with a rag ball in the meadows, Rudi began playing organised football at Zagreb's Jedinstvo, which he joined in 1957 together with half of his classmates. Dinamo noticed him at the tournament of the republics in Tuzla, where he shone in the jersey of the Croatian youth national team, playing as a left half.

Even at that early age, as a junior, he stood out for his excellent penalties and free kicks, which remained his trademark throughout his career. In the Blues' first youth team he played as a half, then as a deep-lying midfielder, later as a right-back and then as a holding midfielder... At the beginning of his Maksimir career, he settled in at right-back.

In the 1963/64 season, he was named the best player in Yugoslavia in a poll by the daily newspaper Sportske novosti. In a poll in which 3,231 Dinamo members took part, he was chosen as the best player of 1964. Belin received 2,803 votes, while runner-up Slaven Zambata received 242.

He went into military service in autumn 1966 and rejoined the team in the spring part of the 1967 season, on the eve of the historic ties against Juventus in the quarter-finals of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.

And what a comeback it was. In the return leg against Juventus in Zagreb, in the middle of the second half, he took a free kick... The ball missed the goal by only a centimetre. But his "radar" was spot on about ten minutes later. The Blues had another free kick, almost in the same spot. This time Belin hit the target. The Blues won 3-0.

The most important goal of his career was probably the one he scored in the legendary return match against Eintracht in Zagreb, where the Blues were chasing a three-goal deficit from the first leg. It was Belin who, with a penalty in extra time, in the 102nd minute, calmly shook the net for the final 4-0 and a historic celebration.

After finishing his playing career, Belin also became a coach of the Blues. He led the first team in three spells: in the 1977/78 season, then in August and September 1983, and at the end of the 1989 season. He was head coach of the Iraqi national team in 2002, when the match against Iran, on whose bench sat Miroslav Ćiro Blažević, drew particular public attention. In 1982, Belin was also Blažević's assistant on the Blues' march to the championship title.

He played for Dinamo from 1959 to 1970 and, with the Blues, reached two Inter-Cities Fairs Cup finals: in 1963 they lost to Valencia, while in 1967 they won the trophy with a victory over Leeds United. With the Blues, he also won the Cup in 1963, 1965 and 1969.

He played 410 matches for Dinamo, scoring 74 goals. He also played for Belgium's Beerschot from 1970 to 1974. For the Yugoslav national team, he played 29 matches and scored six goals.