The Golden Team
The Golden Team (Hungarian: Aranycsapat; also known as the Magical Magyars, the Marvellous Magyars, the Magnificent Magyars, or the Mighty Magyars) refers to the record-breaking and world-renowned Hungary national football team of the 1950s held in esteem to be one of the greatest national sides ever in international competition. It is praised, among other accomplishments, for being the team that re-invented football in the post-war World War II era. It is associated with several of the most notable matches of all time, taking part in four historically significant games of the 20th century, including the "Match of the Century", the "Battle of Berne", a semi-final with Uruguay and the "Miracle of Berne".The team's brilliance from the spring of 1950 lasted until its subsequent meltdown after the heroic and ill-fated 1956 Hungarian Revolution, a major flashpoint in the Cold War. It is credited with directly leading to a kind of future tense football that opened a new chapter in the game's tactical scope for positional fluidity, thus rendering contemporary forms and styles of the game outmoded. It introduced a powerful revolutionary ground game with its polyvalent quasi-4-2-4 offense and an early approximation towards the famous 360-degree "Total Football" strategy that later the Dutch football scene were synonymous with. The heirs to Hungary's variant 4-2-4 tactical shape were eventual world champions Brazilian teams who adopted, emulated and perfected the Europeans' legacy for the 1958, 1962 and 1970 World Cups.
One of the most technically proficient teams in history, by ratio of victories per game, tactical renovation, in company with its acclaimed matches, the side ranks as one of association sports' most dominant forces in the 20th century. As the definitive sports machine from the Eastern Bloc of the era, it was also a tool used by Hungarian communist authorities in the propaganda war with the Cold War West, held up as emblematic of socialist ideals by virtue of liberating the genius that lay dormant in the proletariat. Its sporting prominence has been a topic of debate amongst postwar historians who noted its measured influence on central European political and economic trends after one of the most celebrated World Cup competitions in 1954.
The ensemble could call on half-a-dozen world-class players within its cast, led by its talismanic captain Ferenc Puskás, prodigal goalscorer Sándor Kocsis, the deep lying centre-forward Nándor Hidegkuti, swift and buccaneering winger Zoltán Czibor, great midfield choreographer József Bozsik who set the tenor for the tactical nous going forward and a first rate goalkeeper in Gyula Grosics. The incomparable attacking nexus of Puskás—Kocsis—Hidegkuti provided the Magical Magyars a windfall of 198 goals, Mihály Lantos, József Zakariás and Jenő Buzánszky modelled a good and oft-outperforming defense.
"Socialist Football" and Advent of "Playmaker"
The source of the intellectual firepower of the team at the managerial level began with Gusztáv Sebes, who had been a trade union organizer in Budapest and pre-war Paris at Renault car factories and thus was accorded a political clean bill of health to run affairs as the Deputy Sports Minister. He knead his socialist credentials to a new formulaic style that caused world football to witness "socialist football" in its prime — team game that would brush aside a collection of individuals for six years to set milestones not set before or since. Sebes and his staff were keen to reference a new genre in football governed by the idea that a total team cohesive solution where players equally shared the load were answers to the future. This was in a sense, a direct genetic prelude to "Total Football" 20 years before the Dutch, where individual roles in strict zonal positions were less well defined.
A lasting contribution of importance of the Magyars, in particular, involved the prototype advent of a crucial player that would put the game on a tactical furthering — the deep lying centre-forward. Into this total sum versatile solution (where players could shift and interplay other positions), Sebes laid his most influential centrepiece — a high value player unveiled for a groundbreaking role that caused Hungary to reform the game forever. Nándor Hidegkuti was set as a deep-lying free trading entrepreneur behind the twin beam of Puskás and Kocsis, known in football parlance as being "in the hole". This nuance of moving Hidegkuti off the main line put the game on a new course and into football's lexicon entered the fluid station called "playmaker". Opposing lines were unsteadied and pulled apart by this dual-purpose player by drawing a natural response and tendency from defenses to leave him un-marked and operate freely in space un-buffeted by not being amid the forwards. With event-driven spontaneity, Hidegkuti provided crashing sorties as ball movement dictated to crumble the centre goal area; and unlocked in the No. 9 position a new autonomous menacing robust character in football operating on the event horizon between midfield and the rearguards and between creator and goalscorer. Hidegkuti has been called the "father of total football" and was an astute navigator (39 goals / 69 caps), and thus this triune partnership of Puskás and Kocsis up front with a force-multiplier leveraged in Nidegkuti that opened many doors of attack across inflexible defenses to obviate and subordinate all traditional systems.
Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis, Bozsik
Ferenc Puskás (Öcsi)
(1927-2006)
Ferenc Puskás often enters the conversation of where the greatest footballers ought to be lodged in the pantheon of the 20th century. The ever engaging and personable Ferenc Puskás was the most powerful striker Europe ever produced at 1st division football. Undoubtedly, the most renowned and greatest of Hungarian sportsmen, he is likely in company with Harry Houdini and Ernő Rubik of Rubik's Cube fame for being the most famous Hungarian in the 20th Century.
In a rebuilding world of the postwar era, in the formative glow and emergence of a nascent mass media with a global reach and enhanced telecommunications, increasing networked newswires and live television coverage that meet audiences as never before Puskás was football's first superstar both club level and in the world game predating the likes of Di Stéfano, Pelé, Johan Cruijff, George Best, and Diego Maradona.
Sándor Kocsis
(1929-1979)
Bozsik József
(1925-1978)
A man with a touch of Midas in him, every team to which Puskás was privy as a captain and player seemed to prosper immensely as they profited from an elegant and fiery competitor who could seem to annex the world's best obdurate lines with perfomances that sparkled before goal. As captain of mighty Honvéd, the greatest club side before the emergence of Read Madrid, and captain of Hungary, and later a four-time Spanish league-leading prodigious forward with Real Madrid in legendary communion with Alfredo Di Stéfano with whom he shared three European Championships, Puskás's metoric rise on football landscape is a Horatio Alger tale from behind the Iron Curtain.
Many years before the team's arrival on football's scene, Hungary's Imre Schlosser owned world football's premium record for most goals scored with 59 since 1921. During the Magical Magyars' flowering, Puskás proceeded to famously break his countryman's record in 1953, and Kocsis registered his 60th goal in just his 50th game in 1955, and Hungary boasted of fielding the no. 1 and no. 2 world record holders simultaneously. Kocsis's 75 goals in just 68 games and his world record 6 hatricks were only overcome by Pelé's 77 goals in his 92 matches. The Hungarian captain's superior tally of 84 international goals in 85 games tournament as victors.
"Match of the Century" (England vs. Hungary 1953)
On a foggy Wednesday afternoon on November 25, 1953, in front of 105,000 in Empire Wembley Stadium and to millions of worldwide listeners and television viewers the "The Magical Magyars" mesmerized, the tactical mileage and individual skill sets between the two teams were seen and revealed immediately. Within the first minute, the whole English defense experienced variable geometric pressure invented out from midfield as the Magyars' startling attack proved insolvable with a new ground game that made lanes into England's stout stereotypical WM formation and exploited a flaw in their rigid marking system that opened yawning gaps by cleverly drawing defenders out of position. Nándor Hidegkuti could not be subdued. 45 seconds into the match, Hidegkuti ran down a centre seam, sold a feint thereby freezing Harry Johnson, diagonally angled inside and sent a rising 15-yard vector into the upper right corner of the net beyond the lunging mitt of goalkeeper Gil Merrick - quickly 1-0. Throughout the game Hidegkuti was un-markable in a starring role as he haunted the English line mixed with befuddling actions of Ferenc Puskás — a man who always seemed to move inexorably towards goal to drive in balls from all possible angles and distances — and the Hungarian line that posed tactical riddles by running interference for one another in interchanging their positions almost clairvoyantly on queue. These events left England in a nonplussed state, most especially centre-half Harry Johnston. Johnson was never assignment true in his dealings with Hungary's No. 9 Hidegkuti, unsure whether to accommodate him man-to-man or play zonally that caused him to be subtly adrift in a kind of no man's land that undone a large part of the English defensive posture.
A well-timed English counter-attack ensued that began in the penalty area, and down field Stan Mortensen released Jackie Sewell who put it past Gyula Grosics to restore order 1-1 at 13 minutes. But Nándor Hidegkuti fatefully scored again off a clearance that was treated poorly; and Ferenc Puskás became the world leader for most international goals via a seven-pass negotiation of the English defense, culminating in what many Hungarians call the "Goal of the Century". Puskás' famous "drag-back" goal imparted on him football immorality captured on film by executing a stunning piece of off-hand ball control from impromptu impulse that is a mainstay on classic highlight footage. It involved Puskás taking up position on the right-hand side of the six-yard box after receiving a less than perfect flat pass from right as Billy Wright barrels down to dispossess the escaping ball that drifts toward the dead-ball line. Puskás reflexively drags back the loose ball with the sole of his boot an instant before the arriving tackle, leaving the English captain finding empty space where the ball had been, de-cleated and nearly sprawled on his back. Puskás then pivots to find a ray of daylight between the near post and keeper Gill Merrick. The resultant Puskás cannonball between the crook of Merrick's left arm and the near post was shoehorned in to propel a 3-1 scoreline. Soon following was another Ferenc Puskás score — a deflected József Bozsik free-kick that burrowed into the net. Within 30 minutes the lead had swelled to 4-1, ten minutes of the restart the match's competitive phase was resolved.
In the second half, midfielder József Bozsik encroached a few feet outside the English penalty box and launched the ball airborne with a purposeful kick from 20 meters, it climbing skyward on a wire as it hurtled just below the crossbar above a defender's head before he could blink. Hidegkuti — indelibly writing his signature on the game and author of England's maiden defeat — made his earnest entrance felt once again by one-timing a volley into goal off a lob before the ball came in contact with the ground, accomplished his famous hat-trick and crushed the paleo-tactics in worldwide application since 1925 at the whistle 6-3.
The Magical Magyars' performance had been revelatory that seemed to presage a tactical revision of the game from static models into a versatility-based new age that allowed players maximum freedom of movement and a compelling case of inceptive modern football up against the dated pre-war operating system. The match's value for the Magical Magyars' was inestimable as their magnum opus, for football itself the panoromic prevision of how the future game would be played stimulated new ideas both within and outside the Continent finding final value with the world champion Brazilian sides of 1958, 1962, 1970, later the Dutch would be supreme interpreters of a similar style that vied in gripping matches in the World Cup final matches of 1974 and 1978. The famous Wembley game of 1953 was a historical strategic and tactical watershed that made front-cover news in many countries, subject to acres of newsprint, informative scholarship and introspective self-analysis that has taken on a near mythical station in football lore — arguably being the 20th century's most influential match.
The extent of the Magyars' eminent domain and dominance on world football merits a closer view of performances. Aside from a controversial 1954 World Cup final match that this article will later cover, Hungary on the world stage would suffer no defeats for 6 years, counting 42 victories and 7 draws — that lifts the side into the sphere of the truly remarkable. Another fact worthy of mention is the unique feat of attaining the strongest rating ever recorded in history using the Elo rating system for national teams (2166 points, June 1954). The constant and their essential hard currency was cogent offensive bandwidth within a six year 50 game period that leavened the sport with an astonishing 215 goals, around which their golden age was framed.
made by : Richard Hazuga
My grandfather is a hungarian and told me about the Hungarian footbal team in the 50's
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