Golden Team
The Golden Team (Aranycsapat, lit Hung: Golden Team) is the sobriquet for the world famous Hungary national football team of the 1950s widely believed by historians to be the finest national side ever in international competition. Other names commonly used for this team are the Magical or "The Magnificent Magyars", and is forever remembered as the team that launched the modern football era. It is the only national team that has six members included in World Soccer's Selection of the 100 Greatest Footballers. Among other accomplishments, it is celebrated as having partaken in three of the most discussed and written about matches of all-time, including the "Match of the Century", the "Battle of Berne" and the "Miracle at Berne" of 1954.
Ranking the Team among the Greats
One of the most tremendously talent rich sides in football, it centered around a quartet of prodigal playmakers led by its talismanic catalyst, captain Ferenc Puskás, backed by mighty forward Sándor Kocsis, deep-lying striker Nándor Hidegkuti, midfield choreographer József Bozsik, first rateness in Gyula Grosics at goal, and ranks as one of international sport's most dominant forces in the 20th century.
One standout quality is its famous distinction for attaining the highest ELO football rating ever recorded with 2173 points (June 1954), along with the second highest of 2153 in 1956. To caliper the relative power of this team across different eras, soccer's most fabled side, Brazil, owns the 3rd highest ELO rating with 2151 when its theoretical power peaked with a 6-2 win over Czechoslovakia in the 1962 World Cup final. It remains to be seen if this coveted football touchstone can ever be reached again. Up to then and presently, "The Magnificent Magyars" are the de facto possessors of football's acme strength level.
Hungary can lay claim to holding the highest platuea in ELO ratings in the mythical 2100 point band the longest, an incredible 24 consecutive game streak from June 20th 1954 to May 19th 1956. Most pundits forecast this elevated performance likely will never be paralleled. According to http://www.eloratings.net, only three other nations have vied to pass the ELO 2100 mark, Brazil, Argentina, and the Netherlands. The second longest streak for consecutive games with an rating of +2100 was 15 games by Brazil from Aug. 10, 1997 to Feb. 9 1998.
Hungary holds the longest consecutive run of matches unbeaten with 32 international games, a record that remains unbroken. Argentina holds the second longest run when they put together a string of 31 unbeaten matches from 1991 to 1993.
Thought its not widely known when the sobriquet was first popularly applied to the team, by 1950 it was able to surpass milestones not set before or since. Tradition and pundits agree that "The Magnificent Magyars" made their debut in a 6-2 win over Poland in June 4th 1950 to begin what was to be a legendary sojourn as high mandarins of football that only came to an end in February 1956. During a vaunted six year run that many likened to a safari on the international stage, barring the 1954 World Cup final that proved highly controversial, they were undefeated in worldclass events with a record that is inconceiveably remarkable. They earned 43 victories, 7 ties and no defeats with an unquenchable thirst for goals and traditional virtues of resolute defending. Using a less puritan and more broadstroke view of the streak - from May 8th 1949 - using the same criterea to the end, the team can reset their record to 50 victories, 8 draws, and 1 loss - a virtuoso campaign that captivated football audiences worldwide and earned the Golden Team millions of surrogate fans. Most expert opinions conceed that in organized athletics, amauteur team or professional, it would be beyond record-breaking in 60 tries to see only two defeats.
New Tactics
The team was worth a smorgasborg of talent drafted from the best clubs in Hungary, none more so than international football's first post-war superstar, Ferenc Puskás who was then iconic embodiment of Magyar soccer for a decade who later reached folk hero status after 1956. New wisdom was percolating in coaching circles the years following the war in Hungary, and a revolutionary new tactical design awoke, forever altering the game's order of battle. The hard currency of which was a poignant offense who's carriage was so fluid based around short passes, smashes, and non-fixed roaming positions that it became in part cornerstone values for the Brazilian and Dutch "Total Football" experience. It was backed by a stingy Gilbrataresque defence that collapsed developing plays, led by goalkeeper Gyula "Black Panther" Grosics regarded in his prime to be one of a handful of great keepers in his generation.
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The Drive & World Fame
Hungary arrived to the 1952 Summer Olympics to showcase their wares on a torrid pace averaging 5.4 goals per game, winning 9 and tieing one. With a mercurial fleet of goal scoring forwards Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis, and super-sub rightwing Peter Palotás they smashed through the playoff field at Helsinki in a 5-game demonstration of power and sturdy defense, scoring 20 goals and allowing 2. They blunted the world's 7th best team, Yugoslavia 2-0 in the final on August 2, 1952.
Proceeding Olympic gold at Helsinki, Switzerland entertained Hungary's next game in a Dr. Gerõ International Cup game, a regional tournament and the forerunner of the European Football Championship where the Golden Team outplayed its hosts 4-2. On May 17th 1953, in Rome's Stadio Olimpico, it defeated the two-time World Cup champion and a powerful Italian team 3-0, the world's 6th best in another Dr. Gerõ International Cup match to firmly earn a reputation as the world's second best. This had been the second time the Golden Team had sunk the famed Azzurri with a 3-0 defeat in less than 10 months.
On July 5th, Hungary assumed the mantle as football's premier team with a 4-2 victory over Sweden in Stockholm and topped Argentina for top honors, a ranking it would not yield until June 12 1956 for a span of 42 games. After humbling the Azzurri and beating a wake through 5 undefeated matches, a historic collision was arranged for November that had seismic international implications for the sport, long held insular national myths and history itself. It was billed a clash of titans between "The Magnificent Magyars" and the lofty creators of the game to finally decide the perspective and distance between old masters and ambitious nouveau riche arrivals who played a bewitching and winning brand of football.
The game would dramatically shake the football world to its foundations, and precipitate a new core shift in football ideas and on-field planning and displace, for half a generation at least, the epicenter of football power. It is widely thought to be be the most famous and influential game ever played.
"The Match of the Century"
Since the creation of association football in 1863 in England, storied England had never suffered defeat on its home shore from foreign opposition outside the British Isles. The lofty inventors of the game had staged and successfully defended the sport's soaring penultimate tradition -- being mythically unconquerable in turning back every foreign effort for 90 years to defeat England at home. The long reign of its invincibility was beyond legendary as it was embedded deep into socio-national consciousness as a post to which all Englishmen could look to with surety and confidence despite all historical forcasts and the ever-changing times.
Weeks before during the build up of the highly anticipated matchup, the British press had galvanized worldwide radio and newsprint audiences calling it "Match of the Century", and England's sternest test to turn back a gathering all-conquering juggernaut from Hungary that was unbroken in 4 years.
Hungary entered the game ranked the highest in the world against a premium no. 3 English team, but the rankings could well have been inverted in public opinion as "The Magnificent Magyars" were seen as unfit to do any better than other sides in football's first hallowed catherdral - Wembley Stadium. Rightly so England was again reputed to be unbeatable against any side from any place. On November 25 1953, in front of 105,000 under the Two Towers and to worldwide listeners the Golden Team mesmorized and annexed the whole English defense. Their attack proved insolvable with a new ground game that made lanes into England's feared stereotypical WM formation and exploited the rigid marking system that opened yawning gaps by cleverly drawing defenders out of position. Having gone up 4-1 before halftime, Hungary crushed the paleo-tactics used since 1927 6-3, and by the end many old preconceptions on how football was to be played were cast aside on that memorable day.
The victory made a household name of the "The Magnificent Magyars" and particularly deep-lying striker Hideguki who haunted the English line by famously scoring a hatrick in the game.
The Golden Team had earned instant first name recongization among footballing nations
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The Golden Team 1950 - 1956
So spectacularly crushing was the masterclass of Hungary's orbital offense, six players from the Golden Team were elected by World Soccer's Selection of the 100 Greatest Footballers to join the pantheon of 20th century sports' greatest. The Hungarians lettered more than any one national team:
1. József Bozsik 2. Zoltán Czibor 3. Gyula Grosics 4. Nándor Hidegkuti 5. Sándor Kocsis 6. Ferenc Puskás