Well-Travelled Fan Still Filling In The Blanks
From embarrassing Billy Wright and colleagues in 1954 to providing tough UEFA Cup semi-final opponents in 1972 to winning handsomely against Gareth Southgate’s England at Molineux, Hungary’s footballers have had several highly significant crossovers with those from or at Wolves. Chris Westcott, who we have introduced on here before as a boyhood Wanderers fan despite spending all his life in Sussex, steps in again as a Wolves Heroes guest writer, outlining his love of the East European country and how his travels there have brought him into contact with some of the Magyar greats. It seemed the perfect way of counting down towards the club’s celebrations of the 70th anniversary of that epic 3-2 win over Honved….
Phil Parkes beaten for once by a Ferencvaros penalty in Budapest.
My interest in Hungarian football goes back to when we set up a small business sending people from the UK over there for dental treatment more than 20 years ago.
My wife, Linda, and I visited the country every year and, over time, I developed a much greater appreciation of how the game over there in the 1950s was such a huge influence in shaping the sport.
On one early visit, I took myself off to Budapest’s Nep Stadium (People’s Stadium), where England were famously humbled 7-1 and where Phil Parkes saved two penalties against Ferencvaros 18 years later.
I was hoping to take some photos but all the entrances were locked, so I made my way to the offices, where I was met with a mixture of amusement and interest. There was no club shop but they did give me four colour postcards of the stadium plus a booklet commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 6-3 defeat of England at Wembley in 1953. And they let me into a completely deserted stadium to click away.
On the same visit to the capital, I had arranged to meet Ferenc Puskas’s agent in the city centre. In exchange for buying a Puskas shirt – not a hardship – he agreed to get the great man to sign my copy of his autobiography, the commemorative booklet and the four postcards.
Collecting autographs had been a passion of mine as a child and is a hobby I have resurrected later in life. We returned to the agent about a week later and, while the autobiography and booklet were signed, only three postcards were returned.
“Mr Puskas has kept one for himself, as he doesn’t have a colour postcard of the stadium,” the agent explained. What would Billy have said to that! I have given a postcard to each of our two sons, who are football fanatics, and have one for myself.
The original stadium has been demolished and the new structure on the same site is named the Ferenc Puskas Stadium. My visit had initially been arranged through Puskas’s UK agent, who had translated his original autobiography into English. I was thrilled to be able to introduce him to Cotswolds-based Tempus, even more so when they agreed to publish it.
Not only, of course, was Puskas the architect of the side who so mesmerised England at home and away 70 years ago. He was also in the 1954 Honvéd team when Wolves gained some revenge for the nation by thrillingly beating them under the Molineux lights.
Having had some third-party contact with the portly superstar, I managed one year to meet the Hungary goalkeeper from 1953, Gyula Grosics. He was blamed (unfairly I believe) for their defeat to West Germany in the 1954 World Cup final, which they had been favourites to win.
As a consequence, he lived in fear of being persecuted by the Secret Police – to the extent that he never met anyone at his home address. I was instructed to go to the Hotel Flamenco in Budapest, where Mr Grosics would be waiting at the appointed time. “You will sit down with him and have coffee,” I was told. “When you have finished, he will get up first and, if he likes you, he will pay for the coffee and leave. If he doesn’t, you will have to pay.”
Gyula arrived wearing an Olympic Games shirt and didn’t speak any English. Fortunately, I know just enough German to get by. He signed some wonderful photos for me, posed for another before leaving and, I’m pleased to say, settled the bill for the drinks.
One other member of the 1953 Hungary side was still alive, full-back Jeno Buzansky, and I have to admit a Hungarian dentist friend and a football nuthelped me with that one.Fast forward to the generation of Hungarian footballers that came next, culminating in the 1966 World Cup, when I was thrilled by TV coverage of the Magyars’ 3-1 victory over holders Brazil in the group stages…..
Florian Albert (left) with former Hungary winger Gyula Grosics.
All these decades on, I set out to contact survivors from that squad, the most celebrated of which was Florian Albert, European Footballer of the Year in 1967 and an exceptionally graceful forward.
He ran in an upright sort of way, which made Peter Osgood the nearest English player I could compare him with. I met Albert twice at Ferencvaros’s ground, both times with another 1966 survivor, Gyula Rákosi.
I took a photo of the two on the first occasion then enlarged and framed it when returning the following year. I presented it to Albert, who looked at it, said how lovely it was and promptly gave it back to me. When I told him it was his to keep, he hugged me in gratitude. Such humility. Rákosi is still alive but Albert died in 2011. For a while, the ground was renamed after him and there’s a splendid statue of him outside.In the 1972 UEFA Cup semi-final between Wolves and Ferencvaros, Albert played in both legs and Rákosi was sub in one.
Others I have had the privilege of meeting include Mate Fenyvesi, who won 76 international caps and unusually became a vet on retirement and was also an MP.
Kálmán Mészöly, nicknamed ‘The Blond Rock’, was working for the Hungarian Football Federation when I met him. Many of the photos I asked him to sign he had never seen before, so he kept dashing to the photocopier to take copies! He broke his collarbone in that 1966 Brazil match but courageously carried on, his arm in a sling.
Arriving back in Hungary in the summer of this year, I was down to four survivors from 1966, all of course now in their 80s, plus one who would have been in the squad but for a nasty knee injury.
I was fortunate to catch Jozsef Gelei at a hotel in Budapest. He spoke good English, having coached all over the world, including Australia. He was also national coach of India for a while. I missed a trick by not asking him how his cricket, my other love, was faring.
Gelei was Hungary’s goalkeeper for all but one of the World Cup matches in 1966 and told me that, at 86, he is Hungary’s oldest living Olympic gold medalist, his country having won in Tokyo in 1964. He also said he knew he always wanted to become a coach and came over to England in the late 1960s to study coaching methods at Arsenal and QPR.
Ferenc Fister is not a household name but was a regular in the Vasas side that won the Hungarian League four times in the 1960s. He made his sole appearance for Hungary in a 3-0 defeat of Austria in 1965, then suffered a cruciate knee injury that put him out of contention for 1966.
Roy Swinbourne celebrates one of his two goals against Honved in the epic friendly played 70 years ago this month.
His story fascinated me and, with the help of his home-town club, Fehérvár, I met him at their ground. What I didn’t expect was a welcoming party comprising the secretary, media fella, girl photographer and video guy. So, plenty of photos were taken, a ground tour given, then interviews with both myself and Mr Fister were conducted and posted on the club website and Facebook page.
The lovely experience reminded me that we should always expect the unexpected. It was wonderful hospitality, as befits a smaller, more homely club, and I was delighted to see that Fehérvár qualified for the UEFA Conference League this season.
For next year, then, I’m down to two 1966 survivors, as one now sadly has Alzheimer’s. The hunt goes on…