Gusztáv Sebes, the Hungarian mechanic and trade unionist who few remember but was one of the best DT of all time

There were few journalists and the like in the press center of the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. The murmur of Mexicans who seemed to be broadcasting 24/7 was barely audible, despite their team no longer competing. The next day, in the final against the Netherlands, Spain would become world champions. And the last speech among those who stayed there, already at dawn in South Africa, had to do with the decisive influence or not of Vicente del Bosque, the coach of the Red. And the dialogue has moved on to other influential technicians in history.

The names paraded: Rinus Michels, Giovanni Trapattoni, José Mourinho, Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola. Others said the Menotti-Bilardo antinomy clearly defined the two ways of seeing football. Thus, the speech was more like a discussion which then gave way to amazement. Two Hungarian journalists who until then had limited themselves to listening they threw a name and a surname on the table: “Gusztáv Sebes”.

At first there was silence. And immediately, a clarification: “That of Hungary 54”. In the end it was all understood.

The back and forth continued for a little longer. And Sebes, who too he won the gold medal with his team in Helsinki 1952, he was there, 24 years after his death. Although not everyone present knew him.

Sebes was born in Budapest in the first decade of the 20th century. The son of a shoemaker, he learned three things from an early age: that football was there for him to embrace, that nothing is achieved without effort and that collective victories are better than individual ones..

Their initial courts were made of sand. And they were for a long time until he became a First Division footballer. He trained in Hungary and played in France where he also worked as a fitter in two car companies and actively participated in the trade union field. Then, on the return, he distinguished himself with the MTK shirt, with which he won four titles (three championships and a cup). It was not the champion who shone the most on the pitch but he gave himself a gift that was the first of his wishes on many of his birthdays: in 1936 he played a game for the Hungarian national team.

The Hungarian paddock was made of sand

There was also a paddock atmosphere in the conception of that huge Hungarian football spring that he led, in the 1950s. Eva was the younger sister of Ferenc Puskas, the main crack. She knew him well and once told of that childhood in the Hungarian capital: “He had a pleasure that he gave himself whenever he could: he stole our mother’s socks and put together rag balls to play with his friends, with neighbors. He was an expert at this. For him it was almost an art”.

As in Sebes’s day, there was sand in the uninhabited parts of the neighborhood. And there they played happily until the darkness decided the end. István Cserjes – a close childhood friend of Puskas and later teammate of Kispest – expressed in an interview on Hungarian television that, as a professional, Ocsi (as Ferenc was called) continued to travel to that space in Budapest where the best generation of Hungarians were being born footballers in history. The paddock of the Hungarians was made of sand, like the Brazilian crepe beaches. Sebes knew that well-kept secret. And she moved it to the grass.

Beyond his loyalty to the Communist Party, he experienced hardships and hardships. The night before the first big consecration match, he felt all the cold of Helsinki inside him. They say a political leader told him five words that needed no further explanation: “Failure will not be tolerated”. The interlocutor’s gaze seemed oblivious to the closest background: Sebes’s team had just beaten Sweden 6-0 in the semifinals.

The coach was silent, listened, observed. And then, before his he players, he invited the usual: to offer the best individual version in the name of collective construction. The history of the Olympic Games indicates that neither before nor after the 1952 final against Yugoslavia did a team play like this Magyars capable of doing magic without the need for tricks for ninety minutes without stopping. It was a ballet in the service of success. That team was also a constellation: it had Ferenc Puskas, Sandor Kocsis, Zoltan Czibor and Nandor Hidegkuti, among other unforgettable figures.

The presentation in society had been a luxury for football in those days and every day. In Finland, Hungary wiped out. The debut was a bit timid: against Romania, in Turku, they won 2-1. What followed was a storm: the 3-0 to Italy – then already twice world champion and Olympic champion – It was the perfect demonstration that this team was following in the footsteps of consecration. Already in the quarter-finals the splendor continued with goals: 7-1 against Turkey.

Sweden, gold medal in office, awaited in the semifinals. She proved it again: Hungary was the best. It was imposed by a tennis result. The team was a game party, a celebration of the playful nature of the sport.

In the final, at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, there were – according to official data – 58,553 people to witness a group of talents capable of reinventing football and one of those rivals that no one wants to face for the hierarchy of its members. Yugoslavia, which had been a finalist four years earlier, also stumbled upon the Hungarians. Puskas and Czibor, in the last leg of the match, secured the victory. The official summary of the competition offered by the organizers indicated the sporting significance: “This tournament saw the birth of one of the most brilliant teams in the world: Hungary, called the ‘magical Magyars'”.

Sebes was the architect, the goldsmith and the engineer of that set of wonders. His bosses recognized him as such. He was the boss; the voice that everyone listened to and took for granted. “The uncle”, they told him. His success has allowed him to grow within the power structure of the country (he became Deputy Minister of Sports and President of the Olympic Committee) and of the continent (for six years he was Vice President of UEFA).

Grosics, a notable guarantee in that Hungarian goal, once said: “Sebes was very committed to socialist ideology and this was felt in everything he said. He made every big game or competition a political question, often talking about how the struggle between capitalism and socialism was conducted on the pitch as elsewhere “..

Sebes believed that talent should be at the service of all, that if one day someone fails, the team should be saved. So he armed that Hungary which was capable of the best. Also to establish a before and after its existence.

Between milestones, battles and foreign miracles

A year after the glory in Finland, that Hungary played a game that still lasts in the memory of those who have seen it. And also in that of those who have listened to his legend. The golden team (“Aranycsapat”as the Hungarians called it) beat England, at Wembley, 6-3, in what meant the hosts’ first defeat in the most emblematic of their stadiums.

FIFA, which puts Sebes in the standings Hall of Fameoffers the following words to that episode: “If Sebes’s political arguments were brought to their logical conclusion, it could also be said that the 1953 victory over the Twin Towers at Wembley was something like the revolution on a cold winter afternoon. England was so devastated. that the score of 6-3 was not a sufficient reflection of Hungary’s overwhelming dominance, and both the tactics and the technique of the visitors left the hosts helpless and their fans in the stands paralyzed with perplexity. The Hungarians scored 35 shots in goal against five of England and his final goal, a volley from Hidegkuti, culminated in an intertwined game of ten interlinked combinations “.

At that point, football surrendered at the feet of this memorable team. Sebes is also recognized as an innovator in the field of tactics: he reversed the traditional 3-2-5 (known as “The WM”) and both clubs and the Sebes team have adopted what would have been the start of the 4- 2 -4 that the Brazil of its most glorious years would adapt to its comforts and peculiarities.

In 1954, Hungary made it to the World Cup with that unbeatable record: the gold medal and a streak of 31 straight wins, with goals from various corners of Europe. Their first tour in Switzerland consolidated the feeling of an unbeatable team: in the first leg they beat South Korea 9-0 and Federal Germany 8-3. Then he got rid of the two best of the previous World Cup, Brazil and Uruguay, in two memorable and controversial games that ended 4-2 for the Europeans. The meeting with Brazil, an epic and arduous match, has been called “The Battle of Bern”.

Sebes was also injured, with a cut to his face during one of the many interludes that weren’t broadcast in detail on television at the time. Speaking of the semi-final against La Celeste, British journalist Paul Gardner wrote: “They have produced a magnificent statement of football as a sport”.

In recalling that epic day, Gerardo Bassorelli stressed in the Montevideo newspaper La República: “Many years of unbeaten at the World Cup ended at Kocsis’s feet, but however profound the setback was, to the point that some of our boys cried inconsolably in the locker room, time made that defeat the pride of the Celestial and Magyar “.

some called him “The game of the century”. Of course, a certain Diego Maradona was not yet born. Each presentation of that team was very similar to a historical episode, to be kept in the memory of all times.

The miracle of Bern

What happened next was one of the great surprises in the history of the World Cup. A sort of coup d’état comparable only to the Maracanazo, which took place four years earlier. The Hungarian magic lasted eight minutes in the final on July 4th, also in Bern. With goals from Puskas and Czibor, the favorites prevailed 2-0.

Then one of the most incredible feats began to happen: the same Germany that had been beaten in the first round, rearmed and won 3-2, with a goal from Max Morlock and two from Helmut Rahnafter an effort that has found all the grandiloquent adjectives to define it.

That selection by Sepp Herberger was, in any case, the beginning of a truth sustained over time and in every relevant competition: never give up on the Germans. Also to an inspiration for the phrase offered, half jokingly half seriously, by the Englishman Gary Lineker: “It’s national football, it’s an eleven against eleven sport in which Germany always ends up winning”.

A movie, “The miracle of Bern”, by Sonke Wortmann, portrayed that moment nearly five decades later. It was a praise to the winners, but also a shadow of a tribute to Sebes that he built that Gold Team capable of inhabiting all memories.