Ferenc Puskas, whose biography will be described below, is recognized by all specialists as one of the strongest football players of all time, always getting into the tops of various ratings of world sports publications. He was the leader of the legendary Hungarian national team of the fifties, terrifying all rivals, without any problems got used to the Real Madrid and won three European Champions Cups with him. Sports achievements of Ferenc Puskash will take more than one page, it is worth paying attention to the life of this big player.
First steps
The best football player of Hungary of all time had the opportunity to start his career in the years that were very difficult for the country and all of Europe. Puskas was born in 1927 in the family of Ferenc Purzeld - a Hungarian with German roots.
The change of surname is explained by the fact that in the thirties the fascist dictator Horthy came to power in the country, as a result of which strong nationalist sentiments prevailed in Hungary. As a result, the family members of the venerable Ferenc Purzeld not only changed their German surname to Hungarian, but also stopped using the language of Goethe and Kant in communication with each other.
Nevertheless, the ten-year-old Ferenc Puskasha did not know grief and carelessly played football. His father was a professional football player, later worked as an assistant coach at the Kishpest club, as a result of which his family lived near the training field of the capital's football team.
Thanks to this neighborhood, Ferenc did not have a lack of partners; his friends included another well-known Hungarian player in the future - Jozsef Bozhik. If there was no ball, the guys made a football shell from a pile of rags and selflessly played 10 hours a day.
Puskas or Kovacs?
When Jozsef Bozhyk turned 12, he entered the Kishpest football school, thus leaving Ferenc Puskas without a faithful partner in games. He decided to follow another, but a ten-year-old boy was too small to be included in the ranks of future players.
As a result, he presented a fake birth certificate in a strange name and began to ask to be accepted into the youth team. Club employees took the baby and did not regret it. Already at the age of 15, Puskas became a player of the main Kipest team, though under the name of twenty-year-old Miklos Kovacs.
The debut at the adult level took place already in 1943. Kipesta players were struck by the flu epidemic, and the team's coach was forced to attract very young guys to the games for the club, including Ferenc Puskas. He zealously set to work and scored his first goal in the third game for the club. The fraud with fake documents was soon revealed, but the guy's talent was so great that it no longer worried anyone.
The Expendable Major
In the second half of the forties and the first half of the fifties, the football player Ferenc Puskas became the main star of not only Hungarian, but also European football. Excellent technique, excellent vision of the field, a killer hit from the left foot - all this made him the most formidable striker of the Old World. Already at the age of eighteen, he first played the first match for the Hungarian national team, which the Austrian team opposed in a friendly match.
In 1948, Kipest was transferred to the Ministry of Defense and was renamed Honved, which means “defender of the homeland.” The young striker at that time was already considered one of the strongest football players in the country and immediately received the rank of major. So one of the nicknames of Ferenc Puskash appeared - "uncontrollable major."
After that, the officer became the top scorer of the national championship four times, helped his club win the Hungarian championship five times. The performance of Pushkash is simply amazing - in 371 matches for Honved he scored 378 goals, that is, he scored more than one goal on average per game.
Golden Time of Hungarian Football
By the fifties, a truly golden generation of football players had grown in Hungary. Kochish, Bozhik, Hidegkuti were terrified of the defenders of European teams and smashed everyone in a row. However, the main star was still Ferenc Puskas, who had only one weak spot - playing with his right foot. He used it exclusively for movement. As he joked, he immediately fell, trying to hit the right.
At the 1954 World Cup, the main favorites were considered to be the Hungarians, who looked head stronger than their rivals. The year before, they had an impressive series of matches with the England team, which they defeated in the end of two games with a score of 13: 4.
Everyone expected a confident victory in Hungary at the 1954 world forum. At first, they lived up to expectations by destroying the powerful German team at the start of the tournament with a score of 8: 3. They smashed the following opponents just as easily and calmly reached the finals, where all the Germans were waiting for them.
However, in the first game against Germany, Ferenc Puskas was injured and managed to recover only by the decisive match of the tournament. Perhaps because of this, his partners could not win the world championship, because the “killer left” striker was never able to hit the goal once. The Hungarians led the final with a score of 2: 0, however, the German national team was able to turn the game around and won (3: 2).
"Defector"
In 1956, a wave of mass demonstrations swept through Hungary, which culminated in a coup. These speeches were severely suppressed by the Soviet troops, which caused discontent from many Hungarians. At that time, Honved was at a training camp abroad, and Ferenc Puskas, together with a group of club partners, decided not to return to his homeland and remained in Austria.
The Hungarian Federation demanded lifelong disqualification of the “defectors,” but FIFA limited itself to a two-year ban of Hungarian players. During these two years, Puskas tried to get settled in Italy, however, failed. During a period of inactivity, Ferenc lost his form a little and gained as much as 30 kg of excess weight.
Desperate, he was already thinking about ending his football career, because in those years 30 years was considered a very respectable age for a football player. However, at that time, one of the coaches of Real Madrid was the Hungarian Estraicher, who knew very well the potential of Ferenc from his experience in Honved. He persuaded the leadership of the Spanish grandee to give a chance to his old friend, and he joined the new team.
Second youth
Having missed the big football in two years of inactivity, Ferenc Puskas again began to terrify goalkeepers and defenders of rivals. He and Alfredo Di Stefano composed a magical duet of strikers of Real Madrid, which went down in the history of world sports. Four times Ferenc Puskas, whose nicknames were known to every Madrid boy, became the top scorer in the championship of Spain.
I remember the final of the European Cup in 1960, in which the Hungarian scored four goals for Eintracht. The “Cannon”, as it was called in Madrid, shone until the mid-sixties, having managed to win three European Cups. This sporting centenarian ended his incredible career in 1966, reaching the age of 38 years.
Even by today's standards, this is an incomprehensible age for a high-level striker, and at that time the forwards finished playing, barely reaching the thirty-year mark.
Off the field
During his stay in Spain, the Hungarian nugget successfully invested his savings in various enterprises and by the end of his sports career he became a well-to-do person. However, he loved football and decided to continue and go on to coaching. Unfortunately, as a coach, Ferenc Puskas was not as good as as a player.
He worked with different teams, starting from the Spanish Hercules and ending with Australian clubs, however, only the Greek period in his career was successful.
Ferenc led the Athenian Panathinaikos several times to the title of champion of the country, and once even brought the modest club to the final of the European Cup.
Homecoming
In the eighties, the situation in Hungary became more liberal, Ferenc was forgiven for his flight from the country and returned to citizenship. The Ministry of Defense even reinstated him in the rank of major of the Armed Forces. In 1993, Puskash returned to his homeland, coached the national team for some time.
In 2002, while the world football legend was still alive, the Nepstadion Stadium in Budapest was renamed in his honor.
In 2006, the great forward passed away. In 2013, a monument to Ferenc Puskas on the square of his own name was inaugurated.