Football Arrives

The Golden Team did not appear from nowhere. Hungarian football already had half a century of clubs, rivalries, crowds and ideas behind it by 1950. This chapter follows the game from its arrival in the late nineteenth century, through the clubs and cafés that nursed it, to the 1938 World Cup final, where Hungary first showed how good it could be and first learned how it feels to lose a final. Several dates here are approximate, as the sources vary on early football, and the chapter says so where it matters.

A Game From Elsewhere

Football reached Hungary from Britain, as it did most of Europe, in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It travelled with students who had studied abroad, engineers and businessmen, and visiting British players and teachers. At the time Hungary was one half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and Budapest was a fast-growing capital with a confident middle class, newspapers and a strong sporting culture of gymnastics, fencing and athletics. Football found a place in that world early and grew quickly, helped by being cheap to play and easy to follow.

The Clubs

Hungarian football grew around a handful of Budapest clubs, each with its own identity. These rivalries lasted through the Golden Team years and beyond.

The Coffee-House Game

Budapest's coffee houses were part of the city's public life, and football lived in them as much as on the pitch. Players, journalists, officials and fans met in cafés to argue about selections, tactics and the latest match. Clubs often had a favourite café, and football writers helped to create a lively, opinionated culture around the game. The phrase "coffee-house football" has stuck as shorthand for a way of playing that is thoughtful, technical and talkative: the game is analysed before it is played. The phrase is partly a legend, and no one should treat it as a precise description of the clubs, but it points to something real about the culture.

The Danubian Style

Football in Vienna, Budapest and Prague developed a recognisable style in the early twentieth century, often called the Danubian school. The British game of the time stressed long balls, physical challenges and individual running. The Danubian approach put more weight on short passing along the ground and on technique with the ball. Scottish coaches, sometimes nicknamed "Scotch professors", had been influential in this: their passing game, based on short combinations, suited central Europe. English coaches such as Jimmy Hogan (Chapter 3) added to it.

How far this was a single style, and how much of it came from Scotland rather than England, is argued over by football historians. This course treats it as a broad tendency rather than a fixed school.

Internationals and Rivals

A national football side was founded in 1901, when the Hungarian Football Federation (Magyar Labdarúgó Szövetség) was set up. Hungary's first international match was against Austria in Vienna in 1902, and it was lost heavily, by a score generally given as 5–0. The Vienna–Budapest fixture then became one of the oldest regular rivalries in European football, and it drove both nations to improve.

The Interwar Years

After the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon (1920), Hungary lost about two-thirds of its former territory and a large part of its population. Sport, and football in particular, became one place where national pride could be expressed. Hungarian clubs won international trophies in the Mitropa Cup, and the national side was among the best in Europe. The best-known player of the period was György Sárosi, a centre-forward for Ferencváros (and later also a coach), who became captain of the national team.

1938: The First Final

At the 1938 World Cup in France, Hungary reached the final, beating Sweden in the semi-final. The final was played in Paris against Italy, the reigning world champions, and Hungary lost 4–2. The result is the first of two World Cup final defeats in this course. It matters for later chapters for two reasons. First, it showed that a Hungarian side could compete at the very top. Second, it began a pattern that Hungarians sometimes call a national habit: coming agonisingly close, then losing.

Exercises

Next chapter: Jimmy Hogan: The Englishman Who Taught Hungary, which looks at the coach whose ideas fed this tradition and who ended up honoured in Budapest and forgotten at home.