Magical Maygars

The Rise and Fall of the World's Once Greatest Football Team

David Bailey

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785315886
• Year: 2019

Magical Magyars tells the remarkable story of the legendary Hungarian football team of the 50s, a side whose breathtaking technical skills and passing-and-movement style of play changed the very way the sport was played. Author David Bailey traces the team's origins and details how communist Hungary, a tiny nation impoverished and subjugated by one of the most brutal Stalinist regimes in the Soviet empire, was able to produce a football team that was the envy of the sporting world, and so very nearly world champions. Captained by the genius that was Ferenc Puskás, the Magical Magyars walked a tightrope between being the regime's darlings and providing the beleaguered Hungarian people with a sense of national pride during their darkest days. The team enthralled, dominated and revolutionised world football - until its own demise was brought about by a revolution of a different kind. Weaving in threads of friendship and betrayal, tactics and politics, the quest for glory and upheaval, here is a football story quite unlike any other.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• ‘When Hungary’s football history is told, Jimmy Hogan’s name should be written in gold’
• ‘The game boils down to the ‘three B’s’. Brains, Ball control and Balance’
• ‘Sebes was a real narrow-minded, iron-fisted communist’
• ‘Little money, little football. Big money, big football’
• ‘The time of sport being funded by patrons is over’
• ‘They both wanted things their own way – they were huge rivals’
• ‘Football should be played foremostly with the brain’
• ‘I felt like I was in a madhouse and that nothing and nobody made any sense’
• ‘The play of the others would range between brilliant and mediocre’
• ‘When we arrived in England in 1953, we were welcomed with a friendliness that touched us deeply’
• ‘Best team I ever played against? Hungary in 1953’
• ‘105,000 people watching the match at Wembley’
• ‘The Battle of Berne’
• ‘It is not possible to stop the Hungarian attack but theirs is a defence that lets in goals’
• ‘Traitors!’
• ‘After the Wolves v Honvéd match we held a post-match dinner
• ‘Two friends are sitting in a bar’
• ‘Had Hungary won the 1954 World Cup there wouldn’t have been a revolution’
• ‘I didn’t leave Hungary, I just didn’t come back’
• ‘Who is this FIFA to tell me what to do in my own country?’
• ‘You must shoot immediately shoot, shoot and shoot again!’
• ‘I was where I had to be. I did what I had to do’
• Appendix 1: Unbeaten
• Appendix 2: Epilogue
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Photos