by Nick Holt
But Uruguay were nothing if not determined and they showed that garra, that refusal to bow, so in evidence in the Maracanã four years earlier. With fifteen minutes to go Hohberg picked up a clearance on the halfway line and fed Ambrois who put the ball into Schiaffino’s path. A few urgent strides and the playmaker pushed the ball into the path of Hohberg, who had run on into the space behind Lóránt. The striker’s finish was cucumber cool, passing the ball past Grosics into the corner.
The game was end to end; Czibor dispossessed a defender (manhandled might be a more apt description), rounded the goalkeeper and thought he had scored, only for the covering full-back to clear off the line. Uruguay hit the bar following a corner and then Borges saw a cross-shot past the stranded Grosics cleared by Lantos. The equaliser came the same way as Uruguay’s first; Schiaffino put on a spurt past his man in midfield and then stretched to toe-poke the ball through to Hohberg; the first shot was well blocked by Grosics, but the tall striker composed himself and drove in the rebound.
Heartened, Uruguay had the better of the opening exchanges in extra-time. Hohberg might have carved his name in history, first miscuing when through, then hitting the base of the post with a twenty-yard piledriver; Grosics reacted well to clear the danger from the rebound when a defender put it back into trouble. In the end it was the aerial power of Kocsis that settled it. Budai was sent away down the right and another excellent cross was met by the immortal head and buried. He repeated the dose a few minutes later from a fine deep cross from Bozsik and that was that. Uruguay went out with great honour; Hungary would play in the final against a team they had already beaten 8–3.
Had Varela been fit, who knows what the outcome might have been? Uruguay were missing the fleet-footed Abbadíe and their regular centre-forward, although Hohberg did ever so well as a replacement that to use the absence of Míguez as any sort of excuse would be flabby reasoning. And Hungary were without one of the greatest goalscorers in the history of the game. The fitness of Ferenc Puskás would be the main talking point of the next few days. The pointless third-place match, which saw Austria beat a drained Uruguay 3–1, certainly wasn’t.
World Cup Heroes No.6
Juan Alberto Schiaffino (1925–2002)
Uruguay & Italy
The great conjuror played his last game for Uruguay in this semi-final. His move to Milan was already assured (and included a personal payment of at least £20,000 – Schiaffino was an astute businessman with no need of an agent to fight his corner); within six months he was wearing an Italian shirt just like his countryman Alcides Ghiggia.
Schiaffino was the first great post-war playmaker. Brazil had their artists and Hungary had their inventive centre-forward Hidegkuti, but Schiaffino was a more modern player than even these pioneers. He was slender and looked a bit weedy, but it was a deception; he could ride tackles as well as anyone when he had to. It wasn’t usually necessary, his positioning was so good he always seemed to have an extra few seconds on the ball than most. His combination with Varela linked defence to attack in a completely seamless way, and such was Schiaffino’s positional nous that if his captain rampaged forward he would often step in behind to guard against a counter-attack should Varela be dispossessed. Against England he played much of the second half as an auxiliary half-back, breaking up England attacks by reading the game and intercepting and retaining possession.
In the semi-final against Hungary he did the opposite and played further forward than usual to compensate for the absence of Óscar Míguez. He was the complete player.
At Milan he joined a strong entourage of Swedish players and formed an outstanding inside-forward pairing with Nils Liedholm. Schiaffino won three Serie A titles and scored the opening goal of the 1958 European Cup Final, which the Rossoneri lost narrowly to Real Madrid, 3–2 in extra-time. He won four further international caps for Italy – odd it was no more; Italy were a poor side and he was just about the world’s best footballer in the mid-fifties. One of those games was in a bloody encounter against Northern Ireland in Belfast when Schiaffino uncharacteristically lost his rag (along with the rest of the Italians) and nearly broke Wilbur Cush’s leg.
In the 1970s he briefly managed both the national team and Peñarol, the Montevideo club with whom he started his career and spent eleven years, winning four league titles. None of that would compare with scoring against Brazil in the 1950 World Cup Final as his team came from behind to be crowned world champions.
WORLD CUP FINAL No.5
4 July 1954, Wankdorf Stadium, Berne, Switzerland; 62,472
Referee: Bill Ling (England)
Coaches: Gusztáv Sebes (Hungary) & Sepp Herberger (West Germany)
West Germany (3–3–4): Toni Turek (Fortuna Dusseldorf); Josef Posipal (Hamburg), Werner Liebrich (Kaiserslautern), Werner Kohlmeyer (Kaiserslautern); Horst Eckel (Kaiserslautern), Fritz Walter (Cpt, Kaiserslautern), Karl Mai (Fürth); Helmut Rahn (Rot-Weiss Essen), Max Morlock (Nuremberg) Ottmar Walter (Kaiserslautern), Hans Schäfer (Cologne)
Hungary (2–3–3–2): Gyula Grosics (Honved); Jenö Buzánszky (Dorogi Bányász), Mihály Lantos (MTK); József Bozsik (Honved), Gyula Lóránt (Honved), József Zakariás (MTK); Zoltán Czibor (Honved), Nándor Hidegkuti (MTK), Mihály Tóth (Ujpest Dozsa); Sandor Kocsis (Honved), Ferenc Puskás (Cpt, Honved)
Had the semi-final not been so good, this match would have been written up as a classic itself. Again the Hungarians threw away a two-goal lead, but again they faced opponents with great resolve and willpower that compensated for having less talent than Hungary. And if Hungary had seven world-class players, West Germany had a solid team with no weak links. The young right-half Eckel looked a player, and Rahn was showing more consistency to go with his undoubted natural ability. They had discovered a new centre-half in Liebrich – he had done so well against Yugoslavia in Posipal’s absence that the more experienced man dropped back to full-back to accommodate Liebrich. It was Liebrich who had inflicted the injury to Puskás in the first meeting between the two sides. The German press insisted it was a disgraceful challenge, but they were out of love with their team in the tournament’s early stages and a couple of the Hungarians later said the tackle was nothing out of the norm and certainly not the sinister plot Puskás claimed just after the competition.
The best of the action came in the first twenty minutes. Germany began brightly and created the first chance, but Morlock headed over from a good position. Hungary’s first significant attack produced the opener. Bozsik put Kocsis in space; the striker’s instant shot was stopped by Turek but fell fortuitously to Puskás, who steadied and shot home. Injury? What injury? The second goal, two minutes later, was a disaster for Kohlmeyer as the big full-back sold Turek short and Czibor pinched the ball and scored easily.
Germany hit back almost straight away, which was surely crucial for their self-belief. Tor! credits Max Morlock with the call to arms after the second Hungarian goal saw one or two heads drop – Fritz Walter, the captain, later admitted he couldn’t see the team winning at that point. Hans Schäfer drove a hard cross into the business area and both Zakarias and Morlock stretched out a leg; Zakarias missed and Morlock made just enough contact to deflect the ball past Grosics. Then, with only nineteen minutes on the clock, the game was all-square again. One of Walter’s teasing corners was missed by everyone in the middle, but not by Rahn who gleefully half-volleyed the ball home.
Hungary recovered well, and most of the game’s momentum was towards the German goal, although it was never the siege some reports suggest. Puskás dribbled through but was stopped by a superb challenge from Liebrich; Kocsis stung Turek’s palms; Hidegkuti dummied a cross when he was well placed to just leather it. The worst culprit, though, was Tóth. In acres of space on the corner of the six-yard box he elected to cut back inside Turek and shoot with his left foot, leaving Kohlmeyer time to get back and clear off the line. The winner came from nothing. Schäfer challenged Grosics for a long cross and the goalkeeper’s punch came out to Rahn. The winger,
an invaluable outlet for West Germany all afternoon, cut back inside onto his left foot and curled a shot past a flat-footed defence.
Puskás was denied a late equaliser by a linesman’s flag; video evidence shows him putting the ball in the net a long way ahead of the defender. Right at the death Turek palmed away a fierce shot from Czibor. This was The Miracle of Berne, the day that Germany forged a reputation as a team that never knew it was beaten. It is a reputation that England and Holland, among many, have never come to terms with. The German radio commentator was Herbert Zimmerman, a restrained reporter not given to hyperbole. Zimmerman’s reaction as Rahn scored the winner is as etched in German folklore as Kenneth Wolstenholme’s “They think it’s all over” is in England.
“Rahn schiesst . . . Tor! Tor! Tor! Tor! . . . Tor für Deutschland! . . . Drei zu zwei führt Deutschland. Halten Sie mich für verrückt, halten Sie mich für ubergeschnappt!” (Rahn shoots – Goal! Goal! Goal! . . . Goal for Germany! 3–2 to Germany – call me a madman, call me crazy!)
Hungary are treated sympathetically by football writers – the best side never to win the World Cup etc – but they could and should have won this game. Some writers say Puskás shouldn’t have played, but he was a proven performer; he scored, nearly saved the game and was still running until the end of the match. The German man-marking worked well on the gifted Hungarian forwards – for once a defender (Eckel) followed Hidegkuti wherever he went and denied him the space to cause his customary havoc.
The Magical Magyars were never the same after this. After the 1956 uprising was brutally quashed by the Soviets three of the big names upped sticks and left for Spain – Puskás for Real Madrid, Kocsis and Czibor for Barcelona. Bozsik stayed and captained the side in the next World Cup. He remains the only Hungarian to win 100 caps (a record that will doubtless fall in the modern era with so many more games scheduled) and was the great prompter and the backbone of the side. Grosics, Budai and Hidegkuti were still around in 1958, although the No.9 was well past his sell-by date. He was a pioneer, a centre-forward who wasn’t, ambling around behind the forwards, his bald head ever prominent, and available for the ball, always looking for an opening. Grosics, too, was different – a goalkeeper who played as a sweeper if needed, and who started attacks with fantastic distribution from the hand.
Kocsis was the leading scorer in 1954 – though who knows how many Puskás would have racked up had he remained fit throughout. Kocsis was tidy enough with the ball at his feet, yet in the air he was phenomenal. He was nowhere near six feet, but was adept at dropping off his man or attacking the ball ahead of the defender. And he could head the ball harder than many players could shoot, with neck muscles like a rhino.
Puskás was just a dream. Short, stocky, rather unathletic looking, one-footed, he looked like a park player. But the one foot was lethal, he just never seemed to miss chances, and the stocky build contained explosive power that meant he was fast where he needed to be, over the first ten yards. The ball was glued to his feet – he would show it to the defender and then drag it back as they lunged and accelerate away. Puskás won two European Cups with Madrid and scored four goals in their epic 7–3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1960 final; undoubtedly an all-time great.
Hungary were beaten by a team of great resolve and some significant talent. West Germany was a country still coming to terms with the shame of the Nazi years, and this team gave the country a sense of pride that didn’t smack of anything more sinister. They were led by a canny manager and a modest, self-effacing captain. They didn’t play with any of the horrible swagger of German sides in the eighties and nineties; they just had big balls.
World Cup Heroes No.7
Fritz Walter (1920–2002)
West Germany
The story goes that Fritz Walter, having been called to military service in the final years of the Second World War, along with many other notable athletes, was waiting in a camp to be taken back to the Soviet labour camps. The prognosis for those taken back across the Russian border was not good – only one in ten returned to Germany.
A game of football was played between the Ukrainian and Hungarian guards, and it was one of the Hungarians who spotted Walter when he returned the ball after it went out of play. Walter had been the star man in the games played in his prisoner-of-war camp. The Hungarians persuaded the Soviets that Walter was Austrian, not German, and should be sent back to the West. How ironic (yes, genuinely) that they saved the man who helped deny them their greatest footballing moment.
Walter was capped during the war, and was one of the big names on the resumption of domestic football. His club Kaiserslautern became the team to beat in the new German league, winning the title in 1951 and 1953. The 1953–54 season went less well and Herberger, the German coach, was under pressure to place less reliance on their players.
Herberger stuck to his guns, and West Germany grew in stature throughout the tournament; the coach cleverly roomed Walter with the irrepressible, beer-loving Rahn, who wouldn’t allow the captain’s introspection to get the better of him.
By 1956 Walter was in international retirement and playing out his career at Kaiserslautern. The new generation of German stars weren’t really following up on the 1954 success, and three months before the 1958 tournament Herberger persuaded Walter to come out of retirement and galvanise the squad. West Germany reached the semi-final and satisfied expectations in the press, and Walter retired again. He resisted an attempt to lure him into the 1962 squad – he was forty years old and hadn’t played in two years. That was Herberger’s way, to keep the faith in the talismanic players.
Walter is a figure of mythic status at Kaiserslautern, his only club, where he played nearly 450 games and scored nearly 400 goals. Their stadium was renamed Fritz Walter Stadion in 2002 on his death, and his house is open to the public as a museum.
1954 Team of the Tournament: 3–3–4
Grosics (Hungary)
Buzanszky (Hungary) Varela (Uruguay) Posipal (West Germany)
Bozsik (Hungary) F Walter (West Germany) Didi (Brazil)
Rahn (West Germany) Kocsis (Hungary) Schiaffino (Uruguay) Matthews (Eng)
Leading scorers: Kocsis (11); Hügi*, Probst, Morlock (6)
Official Team of the Tournament: Grosics (Hungary); D Santos (Brazil), Ocwirk (Austria), Santamaria (Uruguay); Bozsik (Hungary), F Walter (West Germany), Hidegkuti (Hungary); Rahn (West Germany), Kocsis (Hungary), Puskás (Hungary) Czibor (Hungary).
Heaven Eleven No.2
Central Europe (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Switzerland)
Coach:
Ernst Happel (Aut): nearly got in as a player; won the European Cup with Feyenoord and Hamburg, and won the league title in four different countries
Goalkeepers:
Gyula Grosics (Hun): one of the best.
Friedrich Koncilia (Aut): Austria’s most-capped ’keeper – severely under-rated
Petr Cech (Cze): one of the modern greats, now with added skullcap (shouldn’t jest, he showed great guts coming back from that injury – even if not quite as peerless subsequently)
Defenders:
Jenö Buzánszky (Hun): the best defender in the great Hungary team
Sándor Mátrai (Hun): centre-back in 1958, 1962 and 1966 – good in all of them
Gerhard Hanappi (Aut): top all-round player, picked here as a ball-playing defender
Ján Popluhár (Slo): excellent central defender in the 1962 Czechoslovakia side – born in Slovakia
Ladislav Novák (Cze): captain of the 1962 side and a rugged left-back
Marek Jankulovski (Cze): superb attacking left-back in the terrific (if unfulfilled) Czech side in the early 2000s
Tomás Ujfalusi (Cze): distinctive caveman appearance but nothing brutal about his quick, decisive tackling – can also play right-back
Kálmán Mészöly (Hun): really good attacking centre-back, can play equally comfortably as a deep midfielder
Midfield & Wide:
József Bo
zsik (Hun): captain and prompter of the Magical Magyars
Zoltán Czibor (Hun): one of the Famous Five of the Hungarian side in the 1950s
Ferenc Bene (Hun): fast, direct, skilful winger with a great scoring record, a true star in 1966
Nandor Hidegkuti (Hun): the original deep-lying centre-forward, playing in what is now termed “the hole”
Herbert Prohaska (Aut): deep-lying midfielder, would be perfect as a holding player in the modern game
Jacky Fatton (Swi): quick, tiny but energetic goalscoring winger in the 1950s
Josef Masopust (Cze): fulcrum of the side that reached the 1962 World Cup Final
Pavel Nedvěd (Cze): terrific player with flair and energy, best of the modern generation in the region
Strikers:
Ferenc Puskás (Hun): one of the best goalscorers ever
Flórián Albert (Hun): genius who orchestrated a good run in the 1966 tournament when Hungary knocked out favourites Brazil
Hans Krankl (Aut): Austrian legend, scored “those” goals (see 1978)
Alexander Frei (Swi): Good, mobile striker who got better as he got older – retired in early 2013 after problems with injury
Omissions: The Czech wingers Zdeněk Nehoda (Cze) & Marián Masny and midfielders Antonin Panenka and (Arsenal’s) Tomas Rosicky all probably merit a place ahead of Prohaska and Fatton, who are in for national balance, as is Frei ahead of Hungary’s Sándor Kocsis, Tibor Nyliasi and another Austrian, Toni Polster. Ivo Viktor, the Czech goalkeeper, was tough to leave out.
