ENGLAND V HUNGARY
1953

"I tackled thin air.... Puskas completely hoodwinked me... In all my 105 England games I did not see a better goal." England Captain Billy Wright

"I played in hundreds of games during my career but no victory gave me greater pleasure. We felt 10 feet tall when we walked off that famous pitch because we had given the old masters a lesson." Hungarian Captain Ferenc Puskas

The anxiously anticipated match pitted Hungary, undefeated for three years and 1952 Olympic champions vs. England, the 'inventors' of football. The British press dubbed it "The Match of the Century".

The Hungarians took the lead at ninety seconds as Hidegkuti scored from fifteen yards after receiving a pass from Bozsik and the rest as they say is history……

In the end, the match revolutionised the game in England, primarily because Hungary's unequivocal victory exposed the naivete of the traditional system wherein the centre-back would "accommodate" the opposing centre-forward.

The Hungarians had developed an innovative system of attack which overwhelmed the traditional system, allowing them to exploit any weaknesses in the English defence by using an attacking formation that freed them from the encumbrance of man-for-man marking.

Rather than arranging their strikers in the "W"-shaped formation traditional at that time, the Hungarians opted for more of a "U" shape and played in a much more fluid and free-flowing style (a predecessor to the famous Dutch strategy of "total football") than their startled English counterparts.

DVD Info

Region: 2
Running Time: 91 minutes