Achiever
Goal-getter extraordinaire
But he used only one foot!

FERENC PUSKAS was born in Budapest, Hungary, as the son of a footballer. His father was for three years the centre-half of a club called Kispest.

Puskas Junior became one of the greatest attacking players in the history of soccer... thanks to the help he did not receive from his father.

"My debt to my father is a lasting one," he recalled recently. "And not the least part of it was all the coaching that he refused to give me !

"Hungarian boys learn to control a football almost from the time they can walk. Father packed me out to play football whenever I felt I wanted to. But he never favoured teaching me and filling my mind with technical advice. His theory was that while a lad was growing, he should be free to develop his own style.

"I think he was right. When you get into a team and play the game seriously, there is time enough for hard work and coaching."

Communist take-over

Puskas’s friend in his teens was his next-door neighbour Josef Bozsik, later to become right-half in the great Hungarian team that annihilated England twice. Bozsik played with him in the Kispest Junior side. When they were 16, they graduated into the professional ranks.

The Communists were tightening their grip on Hungary, and Kispest, the best team in the land, was taken over by the army and re-named Honved. The players became second lieutenants in the army, though their only duties were to train and play football.

Honved won the national championship five times in seven years. Nine of their players also played in international tournaments. Puskas, who was not interested in politics, had the honorary rank of major conferred on him after one memorable goal-scoring performance.

For a player who had spent most of his youth dribbling the ball, he had a remarkable team spirit. His style fitted perfectly into the Honved pattern of swift movement of the ball from man to man.

His shooting feats were extraordinary — all with his left foot.

Unbeaten record

"My right foot was solely for standing on," he joked. In 1953, the world got to know about Puskas and his scoring capabilities when Hungary appeared at Wembley Stadium to meet the might of England.

England were unbeaten at Wembley, and had never been beaten in England by a Continental side. They were the invincibles. Hungary’s forward line that day was Budai, Kocsis, Hidegkuti, Puskas and Czibor.

Hidegkuti was a deep-lying centre-forward. Though he wore the No 9 shirt, he rarely appeared at the head of the attack. This flummoxed England’s centre-half, Billy Wright.

These were the days when England’s players came together only a couple of days before an international match, ran round the pitch a few times and then went out and played without any tactical plan.

The Hungarians brought a new conception of the game to Wembley. Their 4-2-4 system was based on immaculate first-time passing by players who ran hardest when they were nowhere near the ball.

Scored two

England were routed 6-3, with Puskas scoring two of the goals. "For most of us, that was the achievement of a lifetime," he said later.

That defeat started a revolution in English football. After 90 years of supremacy, England had been forced to concede that another country could play the game better than they could.

Next year England went to Budapest to try and put into effect what they had learned from the ‘Magical Magyars’, as they were dubbed. This time their disgrace was even more humiliating. They lost 7-1 — and, again, Puskas scored twice!

He was rapidly becoming disillusioned with the Communist regime. He was made to appear on radio and ‘admit’ that he owed his success as a footballer to living in a People’s Democracy. He had to give lectures extolling the virtues of the Communist way of life. But travel in Europe had made him realise how false these claims were.

Big offer

In 1956, the Hungarian revolution flared and Puskas fled to Vienna. Real Madrid, holders of the European Cup in the first two years of its inception (1955-56 and 1956-57) made him a big offer and he joined them.

‘The Tubby Major’ was leaving one great forward-line to join another. Real’s attack in those days included Gento, Di Stefano and Del Sol.

On his first season, Puskas was Real’s leading score. Other great players like Didi and Kopa had been imported to Madrid at great expense but had failed to hit if off with the great Di Stefano on the field. There was only one King at the Bernabeu Stadium —Alberto Di Stefano.

Puskas, who never liked hogging the ball, fitted in with Di Stefano because he was willing to let the maestro have his glory. All he wanted was to score goals, and together they scored hundreds.

Number one

Real retained the European Cup in 1957-58, beating Milan 3-2 in Brussels. And they went on to win it the next two years as well, for a record five-year span.

The last victory of the five was won at Hampden Park, Glasgow, against Eintracht of Frankfurt. Real won 7-3 in what was described as the greatest game of football ever televised.

Portuguese club Benfica took over the mantle of the best club side in Europe, but Real still dominated the scene in Spain and remained the number one attraction in world football.

In 1962, Benfica beat Real 5-3 in the European Cup Final in Amsterdam. Puskas and Di Stefano were slowing up. Puskas invested his money in a sausage factory and early in 1963, announced his retirement at the age of 36.

Today he still coaches. But he says the great players have their talent in them. They cannot be taught.

Puskas had that talent in abundance. He also had what was arguably the best left foot in the game’s history. The most prolific anyway ! — First Features