Former top hockey player Paul Litjens died on Wednesday at the age of 76. His former club Kampong, where he was an honorary member, announced this on Thursday let them know. Litjens scored 266 goals in 177 international matches, making him the Dutch team’s all-time top scorer.
Litjens, born in Loon op Zand in Brabant, started his hockey career in Uden, then switched to De Kraaien in Wijdewormer and eventually ended up at Kampong. There he became one of the best hockey players ever in the Dutch big league. With 267 goals, he is the all-time top scorer of the Utrecht club. Between 1973 and 1980 he was continuously top scorer in the Dutch big league, an achievement that has never been equaled. Only four players scored more goals in the big league than Litjens.
In 1970 Litjens made his debut in the Dutch national team. Not much later he started scoring a total of 177 goals for the Dutch team. His personal highlight: between August 1979 and June 1980, Litjens scored seventeen international matches in a row. The teams he played in also performed excellently. He won the World Cup in his own country with the Dutch team in 1973, participated twice in the Olympic Games and won the Champions Trophy in Karachi, Pakistan, with the Dutch team in 1981.
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