Golden Team

Hungary dreamed of being free, but it did so too soon compared to the times of history, in the false noise of the hypocritical western world that pretended not to know that the planet was divided into two hemispheres, governed politically and culturally by two masters who looked at each other gnashing their teeth and sharpening their weapons: it was the Europe of the fifties. Greater Hungary or Aranycsapat (Golden Team) was in the 1950s what Holland was to the 1970s. Both teams expressed the best football of their time, both came very close to winning the world title, both went down in history as unfinished greats. Although the System cannot be compared to total football, both Greater Hungary and the Netherlands have been able to count on an exceptional number of champions who, with their class and eclecticism on the pitch, have exalted the project, making it go down in history. The Honved of Puskas, Bozsik, Czibor and Kocsis was an incredible reservoir of a generation of champions like Cruijff's Ajax. The Honved was more than a club, it was the bearer of an offensive and the highly spectacular idea of offensive football, in short, modern, ahead of the times of Dutch football.

Talking about Honved and Greater Hungary is basically the same thing since the national team was mostly composed of players from the armed forces, to be precise from the infantry, it is no coincidence that the first half of the fifties for both was marked by international victories and awards. The classic system provided for an M defence and a W attack, a scheme also adopted by Hungary led by Ct Sebes and composed for the most part of Honved players. The Hungarian coach, however, making a virtue out of necessity, i.e. not having a breakthrough striker and having two old-style "Method" insiders such as Puskas and Kocsis (exceptional goal scorers) on the team, though he had to deploy a manoeuvring centre forward, more inclined to suggest than to conclude. The choice fell on Hidegkuti, an amazing wing of Voros Lobogo, who, however, was struggling to show his skills on the national team, so much so that his every call was harshly criticized by the specialized press. Sebes' intuition to make it a manoeuvring centre forward, or backwards that say yes, was decisive for himself, for Hidegkuti and for Hungary, which thus inaugurated the M-shaped module (or M-System) that exalted the sense of goal for the two points, Puskas and Kocsis. Greater Hungary was also the first team to invent the pass into the void, that is, not directly to a teammate, but in an area of the pitch where it was assumed (according to a well-oiled mechanism) that the teammate would be there ready to receive it.