As soon as Hungary takes part in an international competition, the opportunity is too good not to mention the history of the Hungarian Golden Eleven. A team that dominated the early 1950s thanks to a polished and spectacular game, whose tormented trajectory and premature end were brought out of the closet in 2016 and then in recent weeks, during Hungary’s last two participations in the Euro . A selection that saw the birth of the great Ferenc Puskas, legend of the game and whose name was taken for the prize for the most beautiful goal of the year.
The matches of the time not yet being broadcast, a myth has been created around this team which revolutionized football with its tactical system in 4-2-4 and that only privileged spectators and journalists will have had the opportunity to see evolve on a lawn. “I did not have the chance to attend these matches, but my colleagues who did have tremolos in their voices when they spoke about it“, remembers Didier Braun, former journalist of The team.
Journalists, writers and documentary filmmakers have for years seized on this legend of world football to tell his story, much better known on the western side than in Hungary itself. “When I went to France and said that I came from Hungary, I was immediately told about Puskas but I didn’t know who it was“, remembers Eva, a Hungarian who spent three years of her life in France. And for good reason: it is only very recently that the country has decided to pay tribute to this golden generation.
Gyorgy Szollosi is one of the major players in this work of memory. The editor-in-chief of National sport – the flagship national daily for sport, a kind of The team Hungarian – welcomes us to his office, located on the Buda side, west of the city and a few hundred meters from the Danube. Author of several books on the golden eleven, the man is ready to evoke in length, width and across the history of this selection. The draw obtained by Hungary against the France team (1-1) two days earlier, only fueled his enthusiasm to discuss the subject.
“We owe a debt to these players. We could not commemorate their memory, because the national press of the time stopped talking about them.“Says the Hungarian journalist. The story of the Golden Eleven has indeed experienced a brutal end at the time of the uprising in Budapest in 1956. While the Soviet tanks intervened in the Hungarian capital to put down the rebellion, a part of the selection are traveling abroad to play a European Cup match with Budapest Honved Several players will not return to Hungary, the golden eleven ceases to exist.
A considerable loss for the country as the Puskas, Nandor Hidegkuti, Sandor Kocsis and Zoltan Csibor won the Olympics in 1952 and experienced disillusionment in the 1954 World Cup final against West Germany (2-3 ). In 1953, the Hungarian selection won what is considered the “match of the century” against England (6-3) at Wembley in front of more than 100,000 people. Now abroad, the communist regime prohibits these players who refused to return to the country to play in the jersey of the national team. Their names fall into the limbo of Hungarian history.
“In the 1960 Champions League final, Puskas scored a quadruple with Real Madrid (opposite Eintracht Frankfurt, 7-3). Nobody talks about it in Hungary, apart from our newspaper, whose Communist version was called ‘People’s Sport’, and which had only written three lines on the subject.“, explains Gyorgy Szollosi, who shows us some photos of the Hungarian legend taken while playing in Spain and published in his book which traces the career of Puskas.
For “relearn these names less known in Hungary than in the rest of the world“, the journalist of National sport has been fighting for several years. The stated objective is to highlight the memory of the Golden Eleven. He claims to have been the first to propose the idea of giving the national stadium the name of Puskas, the venue in which Didier Deschamps’ players took a hot hit on Saturday in front of nearly 60,000 people.
Within a year, a museum should open near the Ferenc-Puskas Arena to retrace the history of this team and its gradual rehabilitation in Hungary. A process that took place in several stages, as presented by Gyorgy Szollosi: “First there was the return of Puskas to the country in 1981 after 25 years of absence. The authorities had asked him to return, while he was training abroad, because the system was more open. Then there was 1991 with the fall of the communist model.“
The journalist indicates a last step, fundamental in his eyes: “The arrival of Viktor Orban to power in 1998. He knew Puskas (who died in 2006) and he immediately wanted to revive football, which had been in decline for a very long time, with him.“In Hungary, at the turn of 1991, football was discredited and in a state of total disuse.
“The land was transformed into shopping centers and gas stations“Says Gyorgy Szollosi. Since then, the situation has changed a lot. Viktor Orban, since his return as Prime Minister in 2010, has thus been leading a proactive policy aimed at football, using millions of forints from the state budget spent. It is important that this policy promotes corruption, the important thing for power is to keep the memory of the Golden Eleven alive.
Walking around Pest, it’s hard to ignore that the business is successful. In addition to the Ferenc Puskas stadium, the enclosure named after Nandor Hidegkuti, where the Blues trained on Sunday, has been renovated in recent years. The Bozsik Arena, named after Jozsef Bozsik, the midfielder of the Golden Eleven, was inaugurated in 2021 and notably saw the French hopefuls team bow to the Netherlands at the end of May during the Euro U21 (1-2). A statue of Sandor Kocsis sits in front of the Ferencvaros stadium a few kilometers away.
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The draw against France on Saturday emerged as the ultimate symbol, a form of reincarnation of the Hungarian golden eleven, capable of hooking the reigning world champion team. “Everyone will talk about it for decades, especially since the exploits of the Golden Eleven have always taken place outside Hungary. There it was at home and in front of 60,000 people. We won by doing 1-1“, assure Gyorgy Szollosi. More than three days after the meeting, enthusiasm does not weaken and faced with the many French people present in Budapest, the locals do not hesitate to highlight the performance of their selection.
The level of play displayed by Marco Rossi’s team and which has thrilled the Hungarians for a few days is still far from that of the golden eleven in the 1950s. But this feat attracted “a young audience“, according to the journalist of National sport and the memory work of the legendary selection benefits from it. And if the Hungarians do not yet have the talent of their illustrious elders, they can still afford to dream of a qualification in the round of 16 if they win against Germany on Wednesday.
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