Igor Vrablic

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Igor Vrablic (born July 19, 1965 in Bratislava, Slovakia) is a former Canadian international star striker whose promising international career abruptly ended amid a match-fixing scandal shortly after Canada's 1986 World Cup appearance.

The 188cm, 86kg, 21 year-old Vrablic was Canada's best striker when in 1986 the country qualified for its only FIFA World Cup finals. He played the 1985-86 season with Belgian First Division club R.F.C. Seresien, one of the few Canadian players playing outdoor professional soccer in the season leading up to the Mexico finals. In 35 internationals in 1984 through 1986 he scored 11 times, including 3 goals in qualifying. Vrablic started in first two of Canada's three W.C. games.

Two months following the World Cup finals Canada played the Merlion Cup in Singapore in late August / early September. Favoured to do well, they lost to North Korea in the semi-finals 2-0 (despite having drawn with the same team earlier in the tournament round robin phase). Vrablic, although he scored four tournament goals, and three other players were charged with accepting bribes at this tournament and banned for one year, while a fifth player was granted immunity for his testimony. Vrablic was never recalled to the team, resulting in the end at age 21 to what was a promising international career.

Vrablic played the summer of 1984 with the NASL's Golden Bay Earthquakes. In 1986-87 he played with the famous Greek club Olympiakos.

Vrablic was also an Olympian, having competed for Canada's Olympic team in both qualifying and in the games themselves. Canada, fielding a full national team as weaker nations were allowed to do at the time, reached the quarterfinals where they lost to Brazil's 'B' national team, 2-1 in penalty kicks shootout.

Vrablic has worked as a Kitchener, Ontario based horse agent since retiring from soccer. He is the son of Slovakian immigrants.


Flag of Canada Canada squad - 1986 FIFA World Cup Flag of Canada

1 Lettieri | 2 Lenarduzzi | 3 Wilson | 4 Ragan | 5 Moore | 6 Bridge | 7 Valentine | 8 Gray | 9 Segota | 10 Vrablic | 11 Sweeney | 12 Samuel | 13 Pakos | 14 Mitchell | 15 James | 16 Ion | 17 Norman | 18 Lowery | 19 De Luca | 20 Miller | 21 Habermann | 22 Dolan | Coach: Waiters

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