CRISTIANO
RONALDO
Four goals
for Portugal
in their 5-
victory over
Lithuania
made him the
all-time leading
goalscorer
in European
Championship
qualifying
games with 25.GUINEA-
BISSAU
Back-to-back
victories over Sao
Tome e Principe
gave them their
first World Cup
qualifying wins
since 1996.SEVILLA
The team were
early leaders
of La Liga under
former Spain and
Real Madrid boss
Julen Lopetegui.England fixation
with Hungary is
being rerun
The pain of the hosts’ 6-3 Wembley
defeat by Ferenc Puskas’ Hungary in
1953 continues to burn deep within the
English game’s soul, with questions about
its provenance and meaning still being
posed nearly 70 years later, even by
those who never saw Puskas play.
And you only need to take a look
at the sports shelves in bookshops for
evidence of English football’s ongoing
fixation with Hungary.
Recent biographies of coaching
legends Bela Gutmann and Erno Egri
Erbstein have been pursued by further
studies of the football legacy of central
Europe in the first half of the last century.
The rambling Austro-Hungarian
empire proved to be a self-destructive
nationalistic powder keg, but football’s
development benefited from its
homogeneity. Austria’s greatest player,
Mathias Sindelar, was born in what is now
the Czech Republic; the Czechs’ greatest
player, Pepi Bican, was born in Vienna.
The “Austrian” who oversaw it all, Hugo
Meisl, was born in Bohemia.
The original coaching inspiration
was Jimmy Hogan, the English-born
son of an Irish mother. A modest player
but a football visionary, he taught his
new-fangled notion of the ultimate
triumph of skill in Austria, Germany,
Hungary and Switzerland.
Hogan’s career has been painted in
remarkable detail against the grainy
pigments of the dark social and
economic landscape of that era in
a new biography, Jimmy Hogan: The
Greatest Football Coach Ever? by
Ashley Hine, which includes forensic
examinations of why Hogan’s periodic
returns to English football ended only
in failure. It may not have helped that,
while managing by day, he delivered
evening lectures in which he excoriated
the standards of the English game.
In 1953 Hogan was a guest of the
Hungarian delegation at Wembley to see
the fruits of his work harvested not by
England but by the visitors. Hungary had
learned from Hogan; England not.
In the 1930s, FTC (Ferencvaros) and
Ujpest had been among the leading
clubs in central Europe. At one time
almost half the clubs in Italy’s Serie A
were coached by Hungarians. Arpad
Weisz led Internazionale-Ambrosiana
and then Bologna to three league titles.
Tragically, he would be murdered in
Auschwitz – and Weisz was far from
being the only victim of central European
football, which owed so much to its
Jewish communities.
The careers of many of Hogan’s pupils
and contemporaries are examined in
Jonathan Wilson’s The Names Heard
Long Ago, while David Bailey, in Magical
Magyars, details the status of Puskas and
co in the social and political context of
the Cold War era.
Meanwhile, back in Hungary, Prime
Minister Viktor Orban has resurrected
national pride in the “Golden Team” by
creating the Puskas Academy in his own
home town of Felcsut.
In Hungary, as in England, the
fascination never fades.UMARU
BANGURA
Fans attacked his
home in Freetown
after his injury-
time penalty miss
against Liberia saw
Sierra Leone exit
the World Cup.BRAZIL
Suffered
their first
international
defeat for 17
games when
Peru beat
them 1-0.LIVERPOOL
A 2-0 defeat
at Napoli meant
that Jurgen
Klopp’s team
became the
first defending
champions to
lose their opening
Champions
League match
of the following
campaign since
Milan in 1994.need to
swap
these
pics
over
Wunderteam...coach Jimmy Hogan
(back row, far left) and his Austria sideGLOBAL FOOTBALL INTELLIGENCE