The Magical Magyars
Ask anyone to name the best team not to have won the World Cup and most people will probably say the 1974 Holland team. However there is one team whose achievements are sadly overlooked a team containing players such as Fernc Puskas, Sandor Koscis, and Jozsef Bozsik who went on a 31 game unbeaten run due to not only having some of the best players in the world, but being tactically ahead of everyone else and forcing teams like England who saw itself as the home of football to reassess their own approach to playing the beautiful game.
The Magyars were surprisingly beaten 3-2 by West Germany in the final a team that they had thrashed 8-3 previously in the group qualifiers. To understand fully the quality of the team and the reason why the defeat to Germany was a shock you have to go back to the early 1950’s.
Like most Communist countries of that era sporting teams were affiliated with certain factions of the Government such as the Police, army, certain parts of heavy industry etc, and furthermore recognised sport as a tool for potential propaganda. Consequently when the Head Coach of the Hungarian national team Gusztav Sebes believed that the only real chance of success was to recruit players from one or two teams (which he believed helped contributed to Italy’s World Cup win in 1938), the army team Honved was to be used for this purpose with potential players given the choice of either serving their national service with the club or at a remote border it was hardly surprising that most players opted for the former.
Sebes therefore was now able to use Honved as a training camp for the National team were the players not only got used to playing with each other but familiarised themselves with the tactics and style of play that was required of them.
The first fruits of success for the Hungarian team came in the 1952 Olympics although a narrow 2-1 victory against Rumania who pulled a late goal in the preliminary round didn’t attract too much attention. Three changes were made against Italy in the First round with the Hungarian’s romping to a 3-0 victory but it was the thrashings handed out to Turkey (7-1), and Sweden (6-0) in the Semi-Final that made people sit up and take notice of an extremely talented team. In the final itself Yugoslavia were despatched 2-0 securing Gold for Hungary bringing much relief to Sebes as Jonathan Wilson of Behind the Curtain states that prior to the Final he had received a phone call from Rakosi, General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist party informing him that ‘defeat would not be tolerated.
Follow the link to continue reading the article: England 3 Hungary 6 – Wembley Friendly