Table Of Contents

Sándor Kocsis

József Bozsik

Gyula Grosics

Gustáv Sebes

http://magicalmagyars.com/1952_1953.html

'Match of the Century'

The 1954 World Cup

1954-1956 Matches

Inside 60 Matches

'The Greatest' Goal Shooters Of All-Time Source: https://xtraimmortal.blogspot.com/2013/04/Total-Skill.html
All-Time Rank	Superstar	Skills Rating
No. 1 Gold	Ferenc Puskás	9.85
No. 2 Silver	Gabriel Bastituta	9.72
No. 3. Bronze	Pelé	9.66
No. 4 Semifinalist	Eusébio	9.61

Greatest All-Time Of 19th And 20th Century:

Ferenc Puskás

'Öcsi' (Little Kid Brother) | 'The Swabian' | 'The Galloping Major' | 'Little Booming Cannon' | 'Pancho'

***** The Rocket Creator Idol Of The Offense *****

The King Virtuoso Top Tier Offensive 'G.O.A.T.' As The Olympian Score-Making Apollo Of The World Proving Ground Sport

The Most Dominant Upcasting Burgeoning Majestic Giant Builder Of 2 1/2 'G.O.A.T.' Teams At 3 Dynasties

The Upholding Atlas Leading Rocket Creator 1st 'Golden Boy Superstar' Of 7 Touchstone Milestone Paramount Record Pillars

The Re-Founding Renaissance Man And Ageless Athletic Marvel Of Youthful Tonic Ambrosia Of 3 Iconic Careers

The Re-Inventing Pioneering Prophetic Oracle Of The Sport's Modern Times As The Main Star In 5 All-Time Super Matches Of Monumental Historic Fames

The Titan Of 2 Precedences Who Wonderfully Surpassed The Greatest Everlasting World Champion National Home-Field Advantage Of All-Time In 1953 And Forged The Greatest Top National League Home-Field Advantage Of All-Time In 1965

Soccer's Folkoric Great Legend Giant, Scoring 'Bambino', Tournament Extraordinaire, Horatio Alger & Journey Coaching Ulysses

1943 - 1949 Budapest Kispest -----> 1950 - 1956 Budapest Honvéd (The Best Herald Pioneering World Club Side Before The 1955 'UEFA Champions League') -----> 1949 - 1956 Hungary (The Topmost Supremest Team) -----> 1958 - 1966 Real Madrid (The Greatest Ever Team)

Greatest Ever Top Offensive Players In Top Tier Major Sports

The Top Pillar All-Time Offensive Giants

Soccer's Greatest Ever Most Accurate Powerful Scorers

Source: https://x.com/defence2attack

Most Team Titles By Player

Career Goals + Assists / 90 Minutes

source: Recent Data From August 2021

Ferenc Puskás:

16 Titles

Yogi Berra:

10 Titles

Career On-Base + Slugging %

source: On-base plus slugging - Wikipedia

Tom Brady:

7 Titles

Career Quarterback Passer Rating

Minimum: 35,000 Aerial Passing Yards

source: NFL Career Passer Rating Leaders | The Football Database (footballdb.com)

Henri Richard:

11 Titles

Career Points (Goals + Assists) / Game

source: NHL & WHA Career Leaders and Records for Points Per Game | Hockey-Reference.com

Criteria

Source

No. 1 Gold

*****

Ferenc Puskás

'Galloping Major' / 'Pancho'

*****

1.48 G+A / 90

*****

Babe Ruth

'The Bambino'

*****

1.16 OPS

*****

Aaron Rodgers

'A-Rod'

*****

103.6 Rating

*****

Wayne Gretzky

'The Great One'

*****

1.92 Points / Game

No. 2 Silver

Pelé

1.40 G+A / 90

Ted Williams

1.12 OPS

Russell Wilson

100.2 Rating

Mario Lemieux

1.88 Points / Game

No. 3 Bronze

Lionel Messi

1.26 G+A / 90

Lou Gehrig

1.08 OPS

Drew Brees

98.7 Rating

Mike Bossy

1.50 Points / Game

No. 4 Semifinalist

Eusébio

1.22 G+A / 90

Barry Bonds

1.05 OPS

Kirk Cousins

97.8 Rating

Connor McDavid

1.49 Points / Game

"The World's Greatest Goalscorer" The 2015 Exhibition Of Puskás At The National Football Museum. Ferenc Puskás & His Other Playing Great Teammates In Nándor Hidegkuti (1945-1956), Sándor Kocsis (1948-1956) And Alfredo Di Stéfano (1958-1964) As Weighed By Official Goal-Match Ratios (Shown Right).	All-Time Greatest Goalscorers In Modern Top Tier Careers In Official Contests Past 760 Matches Source: RSSSF At Wikipedia
	All-Time Rank	Greatest Official Goalscorer	Goals Per Match	Total Goals	Official Matches
	No. 1 Gold	Ferenc Puskás	1.01	802	792
	Tie No. 2. Silver	Abe Lenstra	0.93	+789	850
	Tie No. 2. Silver	Gerd Müller	0.93	735	793
	Tie No. 3	Ronnie Rooke	0.91	+934	1030
	Tie No. 3	Pelé	0.91	778	851
	No. 44	Sándor Kocsis	1.04	556	537
	No. 57	Nándor Hidegkuti	0.78	523	674
	No. 56	Alfredo Di Stéfano	0.73	524	720

/ The Very True Realistic Accurate Re-Defined Perfected Re-Modelling Of Nothing But The Truth In 2025
All-Time Rank	The Truth Shall Set Ye Free In 2021 University Of Oxford 2021 Scientific Research Prime Analytical Professorial Published Study Source: 2021 Oxford G.O.A.T. Index Video		The Very True Realistic Accurate Re-Defined Perfected Re-Modelling Of Nothing But The Truth In 2025 With Team Titles Source: www.transfermarkt.u
No.1) Gold	Cristiano Ronaldo	No. 1)	Lionel Messi	45
No. 2) Silver	Lionel Messi	No. 2)	Cristiano Ronaldo	33
No. 3) Bronze	Pelé	No. 3)	Ferenc Puskás	16
No. 4) Semifinal	Ferenc Puskás	No. 4)	Pelé	14
No. 5	Ronaldo Nazário	No. 5)	Alfredo Di Stéfano	21
No. 6	Marco Van Basten	No. 6)	Gerd Müller	15
No. 7	Alfredo Di Stéfano	No. 7)	Imre Schlosser	15

' The Greatests ' Top 20th Century National Scorers Of Europe & The Western Hemisphere source: List of top international men's football goal scorers by country - Wikipedia
20th Century Rank	Star Player	Country	Goals	Matches	Goal Ratio
1. Gold	Ferenc Puskás	Hungary	83*	83*	1.00
2. Silver	Pelé	Brazil	77	92	0.836
3. Bronze	Sándor Kocsis	Hungary	75	66	1.136
No. 4	Gerd Müller	West Germany	68	62	1.097
No. 5	Imre Schlosser	Hungary	59	68	0.87
* The matches against the Soviet Union on May 24th and 27th 1952 were played against a ' Moscow Select XI ' (Moscow city teams' selection and not the 'national Soviet Union team') and will not be included in the statistics.

' The Greatests '

All-Time Top Total Assist-Makers

(Update 2024)

No. 1 Gold

Ferenc Puskás

404

No. 3

Lionel Messi

374

No. 3

Pelé

369

No. 4

Alex De Souza

363

Sources: https://topsoccerblog.com/footballers-with-most-assists-football-history/

https://artoffootballblog.com/most-assists-in-soccer-history/

Top National Team Assist-Makers Of The 20th Century

No. 1 Gold	Ferenc Puskás	53 @t 0.62 Per Match
No. 2	Sándor Kocsis	50 @ 0.73 Per Match
No. 3	Pelé	47 At 0.51 Per Match
Source: https://khelnow.com/football/2023-09-world-football-most-assists-international-history

' The Greatests ' All-Time National Top Division League Scorers The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (update: January 5, 2022) source: IFFHS World's Best Top Division Goal Scorer - Wikipedia
All-Time Rank	Star Player	Nationality	Goals
1. Gold	Ferenc Puskás	Hungary	511*
3. Silver	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	487
3. Bronze	Lionel Messi	Argentina	475
No. 4	Imre Schlosser	Hungary	417
No. 5	Gyula Zsellengér	Hungary	416
Puskás was banned from playing by FIFA for 18-months for his defection from Hungary from 1956-1957.

Puskas's Full Career At The G.O.A.T. Team From Age 31 To 39

At Real Madrid: 262 Total Matches | 243 Total Goals + 136 Opta Assists

***** 1.45 Goals + Assists Per Match *****

'The Very Best That Has Ever Been'

The Source For Stats

Twice Winner/Hero Of "The Match Of The Century" | The Inspiring Co-Captain Of The 'Champions League' Establishment in 1955 With 1954 Honvéd Vs. Wolverhampton

The Only Man In History To Have Scored In A:

Olympic Final (1952), European Championship Final (1953), World Cup Final (1954), European Cup Final (1960, 1962), Intercontinental Final (1960) & Spanish Cup Final (1960, 1961, 1962)

16-Time M.V.P. Top Scorer

10 Major League National Championships

8-Time League M.V.P. Top Scorer

6-Time UEFA European Cup Team Finalist (3-Time European Cup Team Winner: 1959, 1960, 1966)

source: https://www.rsssf.org/players/prolific.html

Total Official Matches

Total Official Assists

National Hungary

(1945-56)

Top National, Kispest-Honvéd

(1943-56)

Top National, Real Madrid

(1958-66)

UEFA Champions League

Hungarian Cup

Spanish Cup

792 total matches

802 goals

1.01 goals/game

404 Assists

83 matches

83 goals

1.00 goals/game

367 total team matches

383 goals

1.04 goals/game

262 total team matches

243 goals

41 matches

36 goals

11 matches

20 goals

1.82 goals/game

41 matches

49 goals

Phenom +800 Career Goal Mark

(Sport All-Time High)

World Record Holder

(1953-1980)

0.93 Goals/Match

(Franchise 20th Century Peak for Major Player)

0.88 goals/game

All-Time High, (minimum 35 scores)

1.20 goals/game

All-Time High, (minimum 46 scores)

***** Ferenc Puskás Is The Babe Ruth & The Johnny Unitas Of Soccer *****

The Rocket Creator Idol Of The Offense

The Master King Virtuoso Top Tier Offensive 'G.O.A.T.' As The Olympian Score-Making Apollo Of The World Proving Ground Sport

The Most Dominant Upcasting Burgeoning Majestic Giant Builder Of 2 1/2 'G.O.A.T.' Teams At 3 Dynasties

The Upholding Atlas Leading Rocket Creator 1st 'Golden Boy Superstar' Of 7 Touchstone Milestone Paramount Record Pillars

The Re-Founding Renaissance Man And Ageless Athletic Marvel Of Youthful Tonic Ambrosia Of 3 Iconic Careers

The Re-Inventing Pioneering Prophetic Oracle Of The Sport's Modern Times As The Main Star In 5 All-Time Super Matches Of Monumental Historical Renown

The Titan Of 2 Precedences Who Wonderfully Surpassed The Greatest Everlasting World National Champion Home-Field Advantage Of All-Time In 1953 And Forged The Greatest Top National League Home-Field Advantage Of All-Time In 1965

Ferenc Puskás Is 'The Rocket Creator Idol Of The Offense' As The Sport's Most Complete Colossus As The Most Dominant Extensive Comprehensive Assailing Spectral Offensive Player Of All-Time In Unexampled Deliverance Of Team Fitness And Finesse With Supernatural Au Naturale Evergreen Vitalities Of The Highest Standards And Practices To Be The Remastering Jack Of All Trades Goalscoring Point Man In Burgeoning Buildout Majesties In 2 1/2 'G.O.A.T' Teams In 719 Official Contests Where An Astonishing 3.1 Team Goals (Or 31 Points/Game In American Football Terms) Were Averaged Throughout A Full Modern Career In All Classed Encounters Who Was The 'Total Football' Helmsman Transported By Awesome Visionary Insights Who Featured Such Magnificent Unerring Decisive Outpassing Acumens With The First Rate Impeccable Long Ball, Fast Superb In-Game Situational Maneuvering, Unrivalled Pinpoint Outbound Accuracy With The Zooming Ball Of Thunderstone Propelling Legwork Who Swiftly Raced With Enlivening Converse With The Other Greats Of The Game With Boosting Confidence Of All Win Opportunities And Mercurial Ageless Timeless Youthful Ambiance In Such Powerful Playmaking In Consummate Handling, Crafts And Techniques So Uniquely Singular And Special To Muster The Double Towering Of All-Time Top Major League And National Scoring And The All-Time Assisting To Completely Engage The Premier World Sport With The High Flourish Individual Ace Scoring And Teamwork Enabling Scores-Passing Furtherance To Go Where No Man Has Ever Gone Before To Be The Transforming Re-Establishing Wonderful King Virtuoso Of Élan Who Was Blessed With The Ingenious Midas Touch Where Everything He Touched On The Field Turned To Gold With Enjoyable Fruitions Who Had The Clairvoyant Intuitions, The Volitions And Beautiful Senses For The Game Within All Team Concords And Heaving Score-Making Transcendence That He Wielded The Top Power Ratings On Two 'G.O.A.T.' Teams And Was Decorated With All The Top Records In Longevity That He Was Titular Monumental As 'The Very Best And Greatest Player Who Has Ever Lived'

Puskás, Who Hailed From Tough Austere Humble Beginnings Like A Horatio Alger Champion Heroic Idol Story Was The Playsome Youngster And Teenager Who Grew Up With The Roaring Of The Crowd In His Ears Overlooking The Local Soccer Park At Kispest Who Later Signed And There Began The Legendary Odyssey In December 1943 In Free Sovereign Royal Hungary, A Sanctioned Smuggler Of Goods After Escapades And Tours Abroad, The Socialist Working Class Ideal Role Model Sports Hero Who Outproduced Beyond The Norm Of Good Reputations Publicly Known As The Well-Connected Endowed Fixer Who Left The Hard Socialist Bloc Behind With Honors As 'The Galloping Major', The Irrepressible Strong Noble Renaissance Man Who Was Bravely Reborn In A Second Masterpiece Team Theater As It's Relative Greatest And Very Best Ever Score-Making Top League Magnifico As 'Pancho', The Gifts-Giving Helping Travelling Intercessor, The Bright Reinventing Oracle Of The Game's New Times And Futures, The Good Business Restaurateur And The Esteemed World Wide Spanning Head Manager Journeyman Elder Master Ulysses Who Coached On All Six Continents Who Earlier Played Very Advanced From The Tender Teenager Age Of 16 To 39 With His Every Match At Top Flight National With Rainmaking Tonic Aplomb And Panache And Remarkable Honed Natural Intuit Skills Like A Liberated Brilliant Genie Epiphany With Outperformance On And Off The Ball To Ascend With Extraordinary Peak Ranking To Deservedly Achieve Upholding Atlas Status With 7 Paramount Milestone Touchstones Pillar Records That Has No Peer -

1.) The Greatest Scorer In History

2.) The Top Ranked National Team In History

3.) The Top National League Team In History

4.) The Most National Top Division Goals In History

5.) The Most National Team Goals In History

6.) The Most Total Assists In History

7.) The Touchstone For Top Tier Modern Careers At '1.48 Goals + Assists Per Career Match'

In Added Light Of Puskás' Golden Boy Aura Of Unprecedented Three Teams Fortunes Was His Ingratiating Partnering Arrived Rendezvous Alongside Two Of The Very All-Time Greatest Who Have Performed Super In Sándor Kocsis (1948-1956) And Alfredo Di Stéfano (1958-1964) As Sándor Kocsis Was Per Capita The Very Best National International Player Who Carried The Big Major Winnings And Alfredo Di Stéfano Was The 20th Century's Greatest Ever Top League Player In Dual Unions With Puskás In Glorious Unparalleled Historic High Reaches When Puskás & Kocsis And Puskás & Di Stéfano Once Reigned And Held Foremost Dominion In The Soccer World To Become The Sport's Greatest And Most Replete Scorer And The Truest Emblematic Modern Offensive Star Who Has Ever Lived

He Became The Most Super Physically Gifted Sustaining Empowering Pioneering Groundbreaking Herald Foundational Titan And The First Original 'Superstar Golden Boy Of Joie De Vivre' Of Genuine Personable Public Charisma Who Possessed The Hale Extroverted Sunny Outgoing Humble Gentlemanly Manners And Virtues, Good Humors And Positive Wits, Gracious Charms As An Outstanding Dedicated Determined Resilient Person Of Excellence Who Was Described Young As A Precocious Genius Talent And Later An Enduring Athletic Wonder Prodigy Who Has Ever Played 'The Beautiful Game' Since Its Beginning In 1863 As The Modern Definitive All-Time Upcasting Giant Top Pillar Of Thundering Radiance Of Dynamic Creation To Be Pride And Joy As The Upholding Atlas Records-Breaking Superstar M.V.P. Arc Player Who Famously Helped Establish The World Sport To New Midcentury Scenic Formative Landscapes As An Innovative Modernizing Game-Changing Reinventing Incandescent Leading Defining Expansive Rocket Player Of Elevating Far Reaching Influence And New Stylistic Standards, Methods And Approaches Who Embodied The Overall Near Unreachable '1.48 Goals + Assists Per Career Match' With The Important Penchant For Title Productions As The Prize-Winning Scorelines Separating Magnifying Key Player Who Broke And Rewrote All Of The Principal Peak Summits Who Built Out Three Arisen Matchless Supreme Teams (Budapest Honvéd, Hungary, Real Madrid) Who Received Every Award A Top Leading Action Man Can Hope To Win On 2 1/2 Rarified, Redoubtable, Exalted High Scoring Powerhouse Spectacular 'Greatest Of All-Time (G.O.A.T.)' Teams With The Astral Magic Of Being The Main Star In 5 Iconic Unforgettable All-Time Legendary 20th Century Windfall Future Soccer Aegis Redefining And Forecasting Epic Sensational Touchstone Landmark Watershed Historically Significant Sport-Changing Pinnacle Hallmark Contests In Sporting Canonical Chapters That Are Eternal And Immortal In Prime Time Highest National And World Football Of All-Time Historical Importance And Precedences -

1. & 2.) ' Matches Of The Century I & II ' (1953, 1954)

The 1953 World Sensational 'World Championship Decider' That Outvied The Greatest National Unconquerable Everlasting Champions In Two Spectacular Dual Wonder Epiphany Prestige Classics Among The Classics That Were All-Time Record-Breaking Heralding 6-3 And 7-1 Super Matches Hailed Unrepeatable As Historic Feats That Revolutionized The Sport And Premiered The Mid-Century's New Prophetic 'Total Football' Trailblazing Conceptual Advanced Performance That Previsioned Major Future Featured Styles, Methods And New Practices And Famously Surpassed The Longest All-Time Home-Field Advantage That Reigned Supreme 90 Years From The Birth Of The Game And Long Merited The New Stellar Lodestar Continentals And Established The World's No. 1 First Live Broadcasted Unstoppable Powerhouse Giant 'G.O.A.T. Team On A Destined Overpowering Passage Of 31 Uncatchable Undefeated Matches That Changed The Course Of The Sport In Tremendous Hot Pursuit Of The 1954 World Holy Grail With The All-Carrying Unofficial Title Of 'The Champions Of The World'

3.) 1954 World Cup Final (Hungary 1 : 0 | 3 : 2 | 3 : 3 West Germany)

Puskás Could Be Rightly Owed As A Won Player Who Heroically Scored 2 Goals Where He Could Be Posthumously Re-Awarded At A Later Gathered Future Event With An Honorable Bestow Given To Puskás And His 1954 Teammates With Co-World Champion Official Titles To Best Justify The Controversial 1954 World Cup Finale And Be 1954 FIFA Co-Champions Of The World With 1954 West Germany In The Monumental Title Match That Changed The Course And Affairs Of Soccer, European And World History In A Super Match Of Considerable Historical Relevance

4.) Honvéd 2 : 3 Wolverhampton (1954)

The Top League Prestige Friendly Special Rendezvous Between The World's Very Best Top Sides That Was Sensationally Famous For It's Late 0-2 To 3-2 Evening Glowing Quagmire Chastened Thrilling Revival Under Newly Invented Stadium Floodlights That Helped Inspire In 'Champions League' The Following Year In 1955

5.) Real Madrid 7 : 3 Eintracht Frankfurt (1960)

The Giant Precedential Famously Celebrated Super Match Very Widely Thought Of, Considered And Celebrated Foundationally As 'The Greatest Match Ever' That Forever Established The Top League World Giants

***** All-Time Leading World Records Set *****

Career Accomplished: 1943-1966

--- By The First Original 'Golden Boy Superstar' Of Joie De Vivre ---

All-Time Pillar High In Modern Top Tier Careers

1.48 Goals + Assists Per All Official Matches

All-Time Highest Rated Top National Team

2232 Elo Points At 1954 Hungary

20th Century's Highest Rated Top Division Team

2069 Elo Points At 1961 Real Madrid

All-Time National Top Division League Goalscorer

I.F.F.H.S. Verified 511 Goals

All-Time Top National Team Career Goalscorer

83 Goals

All-Time Top Total Career Assist-Maker

404 Assists

Surpassed The World's Greatest Ever Team Athletic Sports Reign In 1953

90 Years

Partook On The Sport World's All-Time Greatest Ever 'Home-Field'

121 Consecutive Undefeated Home League Matches From 1958-1965

All-Time Top Total Assist-Maker At National Team In 20th Century

54 Assists

All-Time Best Offensive Player In The Champions League Past 40 Matches

All-Time High 1.39 Goals + Opta Assists Per Match

Captain Of The First National Team To Surpass 30 Matches Undefeated

31 Consecutive Undefeated Matches

All-Time Top National Appearances

83 Matches

The Super Defining Redefining Offensive Stratocasting Giant Upcasting 2 1/2 Giant Teams Of Highest Scores:

719 Total Top Tier Official Matches:

3.106 Team Goals-Per-Match Average

3.106 Goals - 1.342 = +1.76 Goal Win Average In 719 Total Matches


*The Pillar Exemplar Greatest Offensive Rocket Player On 2 1/2 All-Time* G.O.A.T. Teams At Three Dynasties**
	2 1/2 G.O.A.T. Giant Teams	Teams Matches	Goals + Assist-Per-Match	Teams Goals-Per-Match	G + A Per Match Scoring Play Team Bandwidth %	Teams Goal Win Average	Distinctions & Honors
	Budapest Kispest (1943-1948/49)	174	1.42	2.72	52.2%	+0.84 A Very Good Team	382 Total Goals In 367 Matches 1.04 Goals-Per-Match Wikipedia Source: Puskás Stats
	1/2 G.O.A.T. Team Budapest Honvéd (1949/50 - 1956)	164	1.98	4.30	46.0%	+2.79 Scoring Rout Quality
	1st G.O.A.T. Team NT Hungary (1945-1956)	85	1.58	3.99	39.6%	+2.58 Scoring Rout Quality	*Highest Rated Team Of All-Time* With 2232 Elo Points In 1954**
	2nd G.O.A.T. Team Real Madrid (1958-1966)	262	1.44	2.72	52.9% (Scoring Play Involved 52.9% Of The Time In Matches)	+1.70 Top Powerhouse Giant	Highest Rated Team Of 20th Century With 2069 Elo Points In 1961
Source: 2069 Elo Points As 20th Century Peak With 1961 Real Madrid \| *Source: 2232 Elo Points As All-Time* Peak With 1954 Hungary \| Source: 404 Total Assists As Sport All-Time High**

' The Greatests '

All-Time Top Ranked National Teams

The Fabulous Highest Performance
Winning Crackerjack Avalon Team Of Ace Six Zenith Destiny Élite Hammering Goalscoring Bravado

*Ferenc 'Pancho'* Puskás = Prime Peak Best Offensive Player In The First 6 Prime Years In Hall Of Fame Iconic Real Madrid Careers Goals + Assists / Match Team Scoring Prowess % = 50.41% Source:** (2) ... (@Trachta10) / X (twitter.com)
*The 20th Century's All-Time* Top Ranked League Teams source:** http://clubelo.com/Stats/Highest
20th Century Rank	Franchise Club	Peak Elo	Peak Date	Star Players
No. 1. Gold	Real Madrid	2069	March 19, 1961	Ferenc Puskás Di Stéfano-Gento-Santamaría
No. 2 Silver	AC Milan	2052	3.18.1993
No. 3 Bronze	MTK Budapest	2037	10.20.1955	Hidegkuti-Palotás-Lantos-Zakariás
No 4.	Barcelona	2006	10.6.1960	Kubala-Kocsis-Czibor-Suarez

source: www.eloratings.net (Update Nov. 11, 2024)

All-Time Rank

Nation

Peak Elo Points

Date Set

No. 1. Gold

Hungary

Ferenc Puskás

2232

July 4, 1954

No. 2 Silver

Germany

2223

July 13, 2014

No. 3 Bronze

England

2216

Nov. 9, 1912

No. 4

Brazil

2195

Nov. 28, 2022

No. 5

Spain

2175

Nov. 15, 2024

No. 6

Argentina

2171

Sept. 5, 2024

No. 7

Belgium

2158

June 27, 2021

*** Ferenc Puskás Is 16 Times Tournament Top Scorer M.V.P. ***	*Unawarded (Incomplete Tournament)	1948 Balkan Cup*	5 Goals	4 Tournament Matches
	1.)	1947 - 1948 Hungarian Top League	50 Goals	31 League Matches
	2.)	1948 -1953 Central European International Cup	10 Goals	7 Tournament Matches
	3.)	1949 - 1950 Hungarian Top League	31 Goals	30 League Matches
	4.)	1950 Hungarian Top League	25 Goals	15 League Matches
	5.)	1953 Hungarian Top League	27 Goals	26 League Matches
	6.)	1959 - 1960 Spanish Top League	25 Goals	24 League Matches
	7.)	1959 - 1960 Spanish Cup	10 Goals	5 Cup Matches
	8.)	1959 - 1960 UEFA Champions League	12 Goals	7 Tournament Matches
	9.)	1960 - 1961 Spanish Top League	28 Goals	28 League Matches
	10.)	1960 - 1961 Spanish Cup	14 Goals	9 Cup Matches
	11.)	1961 - 1962 Spanish Top League	20 Goals	23 League Matches
	12.)	1961 - 1962 Spanish Cup	13 Goals	8 Cup Matches
	13.)	1962 - 1963 Spanish Top League	26 Goals	30 League Matches
	14.)	1963 - 1964 UEFA Champions League	7 Goals	8 Tournament Matches
	15.)	1963 - 1964 Spanish Top League	21 Goals	25 League Matches
	16.)	1962 - 1963 Spanish Cup	5 Goals	7 Cup Matches

Ferenc Puskás

129 Top Level Major League World Tournament Matches Is 145 Goals:

1.12

Goals Per Career To Tournament Match

In All Top Tier World Career Tournaments From 1947-1966

Including 'The Matches Of The Century I & II'

16 Times Career Top Scorer M.V.P.

Source: https://www.transfermarkt.us/ferenc-puskas/erfolge/spieler/103092

Joyous and winsome 'Pancho' Puskás training to be fit as a fiddle three days prior to the 1964 European Cup Final match.

Tournament Occasion

1947 & 1948

Balkan Cups

1952

Summer Olympic Games

1948 - 1953

Central European Cup

'Matches Of The Century I & II'

1954

World Cup

1955

Club Mitropa Cup

1955 - 1960

Central European Cup

1951-1966

National Cup Matches

1955-1966

UEFA Champions League

1960

Top Division League World Cup

Games

Goals

& Result

Games

8 Goals

Games

4 Goals

8 Games

10 Goals

Games

4 Goals

Games

4 (Or 5) Goals

Games

3 Goals

6 Games

5 Goals

52 Games

69 Goals

Games

Goals

2 Games

2 Goals

1947 Winner

Winner

Away & Home Winner

Unofficial:

'World Champion'

Officially Silver Finalist

Unofficial:

'FIFA 1954 World Cup Champion'

Semifinal

Silver Finalist

1961 - 1962

Winner

3-Time Team Winner

3-Time Silver Team Finalist As Player Or Head Manager

Winner

All-Time Greatest And Very Best Pound-Per-Pound Offensive Rocket Players In The UEFA Champions League By

Goals + Opta Criteria Assists

(40 Min. Matches)

No. 1 Gold: Ferenc Puskás

(All Played By Puskás Between The Ages Of 31 And 38)

1.39 Goals + Opta Assists Per Match

source https://x.com/Puskas998

***** The All-Time Greatest Ever Trio *****

'Pancho'—'The Blonde Arrow'—'Paco'

Three Immortal Iconic Legends, the dazzlingly learned grand master craftsmen and grand leaders of the game on the 'FIFA Club Team of the Century': unquestionably the most decorated, completed and greatest leading club strike trio of all time: Di Stéfano - Gento -Puskás (1958-1964) who had 14 won European Cup titles between them, the three would combine for 437 goals together in six years. Alfredo 'The Blonde Arrow' Di Stéfano, the 20th Century's greatest ever top club player, Ferenc 'Pancho' Puskás, the leading epic crackerjack goalscorer as the very best ever top level upcasting offensive player and swift mercurial great winger Francisco 'Paco' Gento who is the only man to have won six European Cup titles as a player were "The Greatest Ever Trio" on the highest rated franchise team of last century in 1961.

***** 43 Important Tournament Matches *****

Puskás In The Champions League & The Intercontinental Cup

43 Champions League And Intercontinental Cup Matches With Puskás

128 Total Tournament Teams Goals ÷ 43 Matches =

2.86 Teams Goals Per Match

Goal Win Difference Average Per Match

Goals + Assists Per Match

Puskás: 1.42 G + A / Match

1.42 ÷ 2.86 = Puskás Team Scoring Play Bandwidth % =

49.65%

'The Very Best That Has Ever Been'

+1.51 Goals Win Average

38 Goals +

23 Assists =

1.42 G + A / Match

*** Pre-Game In The 1954 World Cup Final On July 4, 1954 ***
Country	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
Hungary	4	0	0	+4.50 At 6.25 Goals Per Match
West Germany	4	0	1	+2.00
Uruguay	3	0	2	+1.40
Austria	4	0	1	+1.00
Brazil	1	1	1	+1.00
*Still Highest National Football FIFA Elo All-Time* Peak Summit Max Rating Ever Attained: https://eloratings.net/ 2232 Elo Points After 4 : 2 Win Over Semifinal Uruguay On June 30, 1954**

By Debut

Star Key Players

Goals

(30 Goals = Magic)

Goal Ratio

(0.80 = Magic)

Wins

Draws

Loss

(0 - 1 Loss = Magic)

Win %

(75% = Magic)

Aug. 1945

Ferenc Puskás

A Popular, Lukewarm And Hopeful 50% - 50% Debatable Controversial Decision

The Captain Started Amid A Healing Unmended Hairline Fracture Ankle Injury

Leading World Record Magic

1.22

Magic

82.7%

Magic

Sept. 1945

Nándor Hidegkuti

Magic

0.81

Magic

95.9%

Magic

Oct. 1946

Ferenc 'Bamba' Deák

A Very Bad Decision

To Not Retain The Stellar Services Of Superstar Talented Scoring Ace 'Bamba' Who Was Deselected From The NT In Nov. 1949 By The New Team Coach, Gustáv Sebes, For Reasons Of Being Politically Unreliable In The New Brought In Regime

1.45

Magic

75.0%

Magic

Aug. 1947

József Bozsik

0.08

85.0%

Magic

Aug. 1947

Gyula Grosics (GK)

-1.06 Goals Conceded Per Match

Magic

95.5%

Magic

June 1948

Sándor Kocsis

Magic

1.26

Magic

90.8%

Magic

May 1949

Lászlo Budai II

A Very Bad Decision

To Not Start Veteran And Expert Budai In The 1954 Final That Displeased Puskás

0.30

Magic

86.96%

Magic

July 1949

Zóltan Czibor

A Very Bad Decision

To Ill-Suitedly Place Czibor To Budai's Right-Wing Position In The 1954 Final With No Prior Playing Experience In That Role In Entire Career

0.28

Magic

93.1%

Magic

Sept. 1950

Péter Palotás

A Very Bad Decision

To Not Start Expert Palotás In The 1954 Final

0.69

Magic

93.75%

Magic

Oct. 1949

Mihály Tóth (In Question)

All-Time Worst Decision

To Start In The 1954 Final As Any Player

0.25

87.50%

Simply the Greatest!

1949-1956 Hungary

The Fantasy Team | The Dream Powerhouse | The Oracle Renaissance World Magic Olympian Team | The Top Legendary Crackerjack Side | A Sporting Avalon

The Highest Performing, Greatest Scoring And Indisputably Highest Rated No. 1 Team of All-Time As International Football's Strongest, Most Dynamic, Powerful-Balanced, Most Inventive & Influential

35.59% (+ 1/3) Of 59 Matches = 5 to + 5 Goal Margin Victory

May 8, 1949 To Nov. 27, 1955 In 59 Matches

The classic lineup of the Hungarian 'Golden Team/Magical Magyars': Kocsis-Budai-Zakariás-Lantos-Buzánszky-Bozsik-Czibor-Hidegkuti-Loránt-Grosics-Puskás (pictured May 17th, 1953 in Rome), the highest rated national team of all time. The 'Golden Team' went 49 wins, 9 draws, and 1 defeat (with the omission of the 1954 World Cup Final for a 98.3% undefeated percentage) over the course of seven years that brandished a historic tour de force blockbuster offense in a class of its own that scored 4.36 goals per game at the sport's highest level.

Wins

Ties

Loss

Win

Undefeated %

Goals Per Match

Goals Against Per Match

Goal Differential Per Match

90.68%

98.31%

4.36

-1.17

+3.19

* Does not include the 1954 World Cup Final due to various controversies. The games against the Soviet Union on May 24th and 27th 1952 was played against a ' Moscow Select XI ' (Moscow city teams' selection and not the 'national Soviet Union team') and also will not be included in the statistics.

Basic Win By 1 Goal = 7 Matches (11.86%)

Covering The Goal Line By 2 Goal Win = 9 Matches (15.25%)

Strong Performance By 3 Goal Win = 8 Matches (13.56%)

Powerhouse Display By 4 Goal Win = 4 Matches (0.068%)

Comprehensive Débâcle By 5 Goals Win = 11 Matches (18.84%)

Crushing Tour de Force Rout By 6 to +6 Goal Win = 10 Matches (16.95%)

Source: Historical comparison of National sides via average ELO ratings: 1st Hungary 1954, 2nd Brazil 1970, and 3rd Spain 2012 : soccer (reddit.com)

Source:

The B.B.C. Supercomputer Benchmarking and Rankings

www.magicalmagyars.com/Inside60Matches.html

Zenith Top Level Game Winning Ace Goal Involvement Player Ratings Per Career Match

source: (3) ... (@Trachta10) / Twitter

All-Time Rank	Top Ace Catalyst Player	*G + A 1.5 + PK Per 90 Minutes**	Total Assists
No. 1 Gold	Ferenc Puskás	1.719	406
No. 2 Silver	Pelé	1.536	367
No. 3 Bronze	György Sárosi	1.430	204

' The Greatest ' All-Time League 'Home Fields' source: http://rsssf.com/miscellaneous/unbeaten.html#hom
All-Time Rank	Franchise	Home Undefeated Streak	Date Began	Streak End Date	Star Catalyst Players
No. 1 Gold	Real Madrid	121 Undefeated Matches	Feb. 17, 1957	March 7, 1965	Puskás Di Stéfano-Gento-Santamaría
No. 2 Silver	Crvena Zvezda	96	Aug. 29, 1998	Aug. 7, 2004
No. 3 Bronze	PSV Eindhoven	93	Sep. 17, 1983	Mar. 19, 1989
No. 4	FC Nates	92	May15, 1976	Apr. 7, 1981
No. 5	Cobreloa	91	1979	1985
No. 6	Spartak Trnava	89	Mar. 30, 1968	April 2, 1974
No. 7	Torino	88	Jan. 31, 1943	Nov. 6, 1949
No. 8	Chelsea	86	Mar. 20, 2004	Nov. 26, 2008
Tie No. 9	Panathinaikos *	85	April 8, 1973	April 16, 1978
* Puskás was head manager of Panathinaikos from 1970-1974.

Famous sports hero 'Pancho' Puskás in May of 1962 prior to the 1962 European Cup Final versus great Hungarian manager Béla Guttmann's Benfica in Amsterdam. Puskás in the title game would go on to score 3 big goals and take a 2-0 and 3-2 lead at halftime for Real Madrid. *Puskás holds the all-time* record for best goal ratio in the European Cup ('Champions League')** past 35 scores with 36 goals in 41 matches (0.878%).
	source: (3) ... (@Trachta10) / Twitter
	*The Iconic Titan Legendary Six All-Time* Rankings**	Team Goals Per Career Match	Goals + Assists - Penalty Kicks / 90 Minutes
	No. 1 Gold	Ferenc Puskás	Ferenc Puskás
	No. 2 Silver	Johan Cruyff	Pelé
	No. 3 Bronze	Pelé	Lionel Messi (ongoing)
	No. 4	Lionel Messi	Johan Cruyff

Budapest Kispest (1943) ----> Budapest Honvéd (The Very Best Herald World Side Before 1955 Champions League) ----> Hungary (The Topmost Supreme Team) ----> Real Madrid (Greatest Ever Of All-Time)

Two of Hungary's most famous native sons from Budapest, Ferenc Puskás and his great strike partner friend Sándor Kocsis were fateful survivors of the pivotal 'Siege of Budapest' that lasted from December 24, 1944 to February 13, 1945. 18-year-old Ferenc Puskás' debut in the Hungarian national team on August 20,1945 ('Saint Stephen's Day') was Hungary's second match in the bellwether turning-point and tough crucible turbulent year. The teenager 'Öcsi' Puskás scored first in Puskás' famous inaugural 5-2 win over the world's No. 7 Austria in Budapest 104 days after 'Victory in Europe Day' on May 8, 1945.

' The Greatest ' Ferenc Puskás & Sándor Kocsis at Budapest Honvéd (1950 - 1956) The Greatest Strike Duo In National Top Division Football History source: Positional Hall of Fame: The Greatest Functional Lines of All-Time (xtraimmortal.blogspot.com)
Budapest Honvéd Players	Total Matches	Total Goals	Goal Ratio
Sándor Kocsis	176	217	1.23
Ferenc Puskás	164	163	0.99
Combined Match Statistics:	340	380 Total Goals	2.22 Gls./Game

' The Greatests '

Puskás, the greatest goalscorer and offensive pillar in history with Real Madrid teammates José Santamaría, recognized as one of the greatest centerbacks in history and Alfredo Di Stéfano who was the 20th Century's greatest club player of all-time.

All association sporting teams have before it an icon of unexampled production, the true favorited ideal perfect soleil of the offense or the idol of the super 'beyond further' (plus ultra) power Midas rocket player.

There is a player everyone has heard of. The annual FIFA Puskás Award well receives those players who have scored the most 'aesthetically significant' or most 'beautiful goal' in a calendar year. Puskás was honored for being named the top national 1st division goalscorer in the 20th century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (I.F.F.H.S) in 1997. With Hungary Puskás became the international world-record holder for goals with 83 goals in 83 'full national' appearances and who also held the world-record for most national top league goals with 511. Puskás was also a historic plus ultra ('further beyond') 'total-team' game player to dazzle with a dividend of such enlivening converse and decisive final-pass delivery to teammates to still hold the all time world-record with 404 total assists. Puskás would admit the whole triumphant answer with the goals that win, with the assists that glow to form them into a fine scoring athletic ensemble of unparalleled amplitude and there lies all the length and breadth and the bravado of the fondest player, Ferenc Puskás was the 'The Greatest Player of the 20th Century'.

Once there came a man from very humble origins who pursued football's horizons during times severely tried by the calamities of the 20th Century and as by some vast undivided magic played together with the greatest players of the ages on fabulous teams modern as any who helped make European, athletic and sports history and who universalized the greatness of two renowned titan teams of all times. As a player who was never bought or sold in his life Puskás spent his entire career at the very top-flight of his profession that seemed to raise his game to a sublime level.

Ferenc Puskás (b. April 1, 1927, Budapest) also known worldwide as 'Öcsi' ('Sonny', pronounced: Uhchee), 'The Galloping Major' and 'Pancho' was the great maximally élite top level 'total-team' transcending sport-changing mercurial triumphant high fidelity action player as the conductor par excellence of such leading command for whom formalists and sports leaders had been searching for ever since the early 20th Century. With Puskás playing a key role as captain and primarily the No. 10 forward all great teams that he played for statistically soared as the highest scoring and highest ranked everlasting teams of all time.

If the sport of association football is keyed to the tenor of the ruling goal on a perfectly functional team to decide a match's result not necessarily possession then there was no other more influential history-making, landscape-shaping and efficient powerhouse top-flight offensive star player in the game than Ferenc Puskás. Puskás is still considered the most eminent national and national top division goalscorer unified in the sport. As a master milestones-making goalscorer Puskás was somebody who rows somewhere far on a sojourn to set in the sky high scoring numbers, records and historical precedence. But scoring goals is not everything but also conceived in well versed team participation rejoicing with high skill and a decided playmaking presence for players who could excel and perform well with others and for Puskás there is a centerstage to that praise being recognized as one of the 'very greatest players' the sport has ever seen.

2069 Elo points, 20th Century High

***** Greatest Franchise Team Of The 20th Century *****

1961 Real Madrid

On March 19, 1961 the world great Real Madrid team with 'Pancho' Puskás became statistically the 'Greatest Ever' of the 20th Century.

http://clubelo.com/Stats

--- Match Starting Lineup ---

Puskás, Di Stéfano, Gento, Del Sol, Santamaría, Vidal, Canario, Casando, Pachín, Marquitos, Vicente

Ferenc Puskás' unequalled modern inside No. 10 long forward sublime game of winding ways through alley and trick, the heavy stride and the hard prelude run with the thunderstrike cannonball with teams of magnificent stern array (Budapest Honvéd, Hungary, Real Madrid) who rained goalscoring aura yielding to goalscoring aura as his co-led teams waged contention in 17 huge tournaments (1.00 goal/career tournament match with 73 goals in 73 matches) and 10 national championships that attracts to crush with powerful ardors. With sweet buds of speed and acceleration purposing the playmaking jazz and conjuring the forward missioning winning spirit of gladness as fierce artificer from offensive zone to defensive zone Puskás satisfied the game's full relish, bandwidth and circumference to supersede all teams into the maximally élite record-books of all time rank.

Engaging defensive lines with aplomb in the midst of it all is Puskás as the No. 10 forward fronting the surging tumult ahead where his keener cannonball lightnings flashed who came across with the big-play deft passing who flung the ball to the most difficult spots on the springing grass with chisel legwork to rebuild it as Puskás had gone to bring again 'greatness' for the most fond imponderable dream. His potent, felt, interior command has the quality to strike deep as a marvelous athletic pillar affirming the natural passing scheme that drummed and hummed with a famous familiarity, scoring goals with his many assists that imbues Budapest Honvéd, Hungary and Real Madrid with a particular genius of hale crushing charms. There is a Midas inexhaustible fund of buoyancy as Puskás help build one superb team after another with a remarkable talent through him the current and index of three risen great master teams that will rank as defining sport-changing powerhouses equal or better than the greatest sides known as the master key player with three of the highest peaks ever assembled.

We can view the 20th Century sport's evolution with perspective with Puskás as the great master player whose teams most completely indicated the ways and the times in which football turned from the traditions of much earlier times to the new mode in the second half of the century. Only he holds the proud distinction of being on three of the most fulsomely hailed teams: mighty Budapest Honvéd (1949-1956), Hungary (1945-1956) and Real Madrid (1958-1966), the latter two have remained for many the greatest teams to be seen in all the records of the sport and the two principal and paramount teams of all time.

Three of his great matches ('The Match of the Century', the 1954 World Cup Final and Real Madrid 7, Eintracht Frankfurt 3) were massive, elemental, becoming widely famous foundational wonder games of the age demanding depth and insight. In these games where Puskás was the chief participant, the 6-3 win over England where he scored two goals and made two more, the 1954 World Cup Final match (the world championship decider where he opened and closed the scoring with two legitimate goals) that lived under a cloud of suspicion and huge controversy and the 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the spring of 1960 where he scored four goals are among the best ever done.

The velocity and phenomena of Ferenc '(Öcsi' or 'Sonny' pronounched: 'Uhchee') Puskás, the astute navigator with giants with Hungary from 1947-1956 and with 1958-1966 Real Madrid was the prize-winning sport hero who was on the dial with the serene power of his on-field generalship as a player of superior craft always acting as the true helm of the attack who pressed deep inside with insights and who plays with a profound magical crackling irrepressible 'total-team' game that moved from prim goalscoring who fired goals' certainties (802 total goals in 792 official matches | 1.01 goals / career match) to his idyllic playmaking élan that magnified his on-field greatness.

Mustering game-altering top level scores of the quality of the first and all time greatest American baseball player icon Babe Ruth (the 'Bambino' who scored a world-record 714 homeruns) Puskás never did acclimate to using his nondominant right foot for much except to dribble and he also scored few goals with his head. Footballs warm, break and crackle at his feet with dazzling masteries of swiftness and precision as somebody who lost tough clinging opponents by something he was prized and was renowned by, who upon the sylvan scene on the wide pitch gave the great thunderstone left-footed matchless resplendent hot levitating goal-striking cannonball that Puskás is still widely considered the greatest goal-shooter who has ever played the game.

Considered in relation to any national team on the promontory of all time rank of extraordinary production Puskás was the leader and captain of the magical Hungarian 'Golden Team', the postwar re-inventing renaissance side that glows appraisable as statistically the 'Greatest Ever' (all time high 2232 Elo points); and when faith, hope, and promise around his determination's totem was needed after the 1956 Hungarian Revolt and Revolution he became the star main goalscorer at star-studded Real Madrid that outlined a great team that became the 'Greatest Ever' club franchise in the 20th Century (20th Century high 2069 Elo points). He arrived to his second stunning career and this new powerful Real Madrid team after languishing in exile out of shape, overweight and without much practice in Italy and Spain aged 31 at a rounding time when most players think of retirement.

Before Puskás Real Madrid had won the first three European Cups after the competition opened. After his arrival and on his retirement the Real Madrid team would win three more European Cups plus two runner-up silver medals in the tournament and a top division 'world championship' in 1960 after eight years of service with the top rated franchise of the 20th Century. By his honored retirement in 1966 it could be well said that Puskás had journeyed through statistical realms as the greatest ever offensive 'total-team' bandwidth power rocket player (1.48 Goals + Assists / 90 minutes) who has ever lived after a 22-year unprecedented career, road of adventure and life on the pitch who leaves all great on-field teams solved having beat every mountain tower team with sports all time gloria with a prodigious vaunt of goals united to a near unreachable number of assists.

National Top Division League Scorers: Imre Schlosser (417 goals in 1928) ----> Ferenc Puskás (511 goals in 1966) ----> Cristiano Ronaldo (512 goals in 2023)

International Federation of Football History & Statistics - Wikipedia

National Teams Scorers: Imre Schlosser (59 goals in 1927) ----> Ferenc Puskás (60 to 83 goals from 1953 to 1956) ----> Mohamed Mokhtar (84 to 89 goals from 1980 to 1985)

Players with 100+ Caps and 30+ International Goals (rsssf.org)

National Team Appearances: Severino Minelli (80 appearances in 1956) ----> Ferenc Puskás (81 to 83 appearances in 1956) ----> Billy Wright (84 to 105 appearances from 1956-1959 and first to accomplish 100 national matches)

Progression of association football caps record - Wikipedia

' The Greatests '

***** 1954 FIFA World Cup All-Star Select XI *****

Forwards

Midfielders

Defenders

Goalkeeper

Ferenc Puskás (1954 World Cup M.V.P.)

Jóseph Bozsik

José Santamaría

Gyula Grosics (1954 World Cup Golden Glove)

Sándor Kocsis (1954 World Cup Golden Shoe)

Fritz Walter

Ernst Ocwirk

Nándor Hidegkuti

Djalma Santos

Zoltán Czibor

Helmut Rahn

The very famous national sports superstar 'Öcsi' Puskás enjoying the good time high successes of the team with classic charms of musical acccompaniment in Hungary.

*** The Prime Time Big Leaguer Tournament Puskás ***
Tournament Occasion or Final	Opposing Teams	Winner	Puskás' Scoring Bestowal
1947-1948 top division Hungarian Nemzeti Bajnokság	16 domestic league teams		Puskás' Best League Year 50 Goals In 31 Matches 1.61 Gls./M. Lead All Players In World For Seasonal Year.
1948 Balkan Cup tournament	6 national teams	Hungary lead table +17 goal diff. & 4-1-1 record	Puskás Lead Tournament With 5 Goals
1950 International Year	6 national teams	Hungary 4 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss	Puskás' Best NT Year 12 Goals In 6 Matches 2.00 Gls./M.
1952 Olympic Games Final	Yugoslavia	Hungary 2-0 +18 goal diff.	1 Goal + 1 Assist
1948-1953 Central European Championship Final	Italy	Hungary 3-0 +10 goal diff.	2 Goals Puskás Lead Tournament With 10 Goals
'Match of the Century'	England	Hungary 6-3	2 Goals + 2 Assists Surpasses 90-Year Old Invincible Athletic Team Sports Reign Puskás Becomes World Record-Holder With 60 Goals
'Match of the Century II'	England	Hungary 7-1	2 Goals + 1 Assist England's Heaviest Loss
1954 FIFA World Cup	South Korea	Hungary 9-0	2 Goals The World Cup's Largest Win Margin
1954 FIFA World Cup	West Germany	Hungary 8-3	1 Goal West Germany's Heaviest Loss
1954 FIFA World Cup Final	West Germany	omitted due to controversies Hungary stands at +18 goal diff.	1 (2) Goals Puskás Scores 4 Goals In 3 Matches 1.33 Gls./M. Puskás Wins 1954 World Cup MVP
1958-1959 European Cup SemiFinal Playoff	Atlético Madrid	Real Madrid 4-3 (agg. in 3 matches)	Puskás Scores 2 Goals In 2 Matches Puskás Scores Winner In Playoff
1959-1960 European Cup Final	Eintracht Frankfurt	Real Madrid 7-3 +21 goal diff. in European Cup	4 Goals (Yet Record), Puskás Lead Tournament With 12 Goals 1.71 Gls./M.
1960 Intercontinental Final (decisive return fixture)	Peñarol	Real Madrid 5-1 +25 goal diff. in two tournaments	2 Goals + 2 Assists Puskás Lead Intercontinental Cup Scoring
1961-1962 European Cup Final	Benfica	Benfica +20 goal diff. in tournament	3 Goals Puskás Co-Lead Tournament With 7 Goals Yet Record: 7 Total Goals In European Cup Final sHistory
1963-1964 European Cup Final	Inter Milan	Inter Milan +17 goal diff. in tournament	0 goal Puskás Co-Lead Tournament With 7 Goals
1965-66 Pre-Final European Cup Campaign	Tournament Champion Real Madrid 2-1 +11 goal diff.		Puskás Co-Lead Team Tournament Scoring Puskás Scores 5 Goals In 3 Matches 1.67 Gls./M.

2232 Elo points, All-Time High

***** Greatest National Team Of All Time *****

1954 - 1956 Hungary

On July 4, 1954 the world great Hungary team with 'The Galloping Major' Puskás became statistically the 'Greatest Ever'.

http://eloratings.net

--- Match Starting Lineup ---

Puskás, Kocsis, Hidegkuti, Bozsik, Czibor, Grosics, Lantos, Buzánszky, Lóránt, Zakariás, Tóth

Under the coaching tutelage of world renowned Béla Guttmann in the 1947-1948 Budapest Kispest team, Guttmann's only management year at Kispest after replacing Ferenc Puskás Sr. as coach before it became the Army sponsored Honvéd in 1949, Puskás would have his most advanced and breakout prolific scoring year with 50 goals in 31 league matches to lead all players in the world.

Under a radio and newly live televised age of roaring cheers and whistles of the greatest ever sides known, wholly in the midst of goalscoring prowess shouts three dynasties, Budapest Honvéd, Hungary and Real Madrid that forever changed and revolutionized and dominated football and amazing Puskás, needful to teams as elemental gist and key heaver, became the greatest top level offensive player of the ages. And yet no action of any contemporary or other future player is as so well valuably efficient as the incomparable skills of Puskás.

With bursts of speed whose thoughts were summer lightning on the field with a waltz tune of expert control a strong scoring flair plays ever through them for teams have found nothing mightier than Puskás. Puskás graces teams with octaves of unique skills and unimpeachable long big-play deft passing who brings the new wellspring and style to the association sport to help produce immense electric teams that grew athletically great and far more astonishing from what anyone supposed. Puskás was extrovert, in him drifts of great pace and a daring highly competitive genius. He was a rigorous player who showed like a banner his resilient and contriving wit who was possessed with every and all ingenuity that his keen brain matched his otherworldly accuracy to orient invigorating situations as the whole splendidly cavalier well-wheeled high scoring landscape rang and Victory looks gigantically up.

Across it all in his total 719 official career top level matches Puskás-led teams held the banner true of a supreme emblematic figure of what most considered the qualities of an ideal team player to be and in vigorous participations piled on the triumphs with every team he was on scoring 3.106 goals/career match as day occasions for Budapest Honvéd, Hungary and Real Madrid ordinarily became one-sided swept avalanching débâcles and tour de force routs with a win margin of +1.67 goals. With the broad width and stage of world international football with Hungary where famous heralded games exacts long devotions from 1945-1956 in 83 'full internationals' the Hungarian teams that featured Puskás scored 337 goals to average 4.06 goals with a average win margin of +2.61 goals.

With Puskás the air is blue, crisp and prodigal and filled with victory's perfume with the three teams Puskás was on broadening outward as they crossed and re-crossed the pitch calling out for gain and in the activity and destiny of eleven performers where the very good, the best and the legended move fantastically, the art is long, turning loose the system of practiced skills for the new maneuver and the unconsciously coordinated acts and upsprang the near perfect team.

With teams of indeed mighty legitimate Olympian scope, match after match with strict inscrutable élan with scoring aura yielding to aura the three teams Puskás played on sparkle hot, outlasting all and were not detainable, kept creations at ease and moved more ways than one amid the palings of their rivals. All fashion of opposing defending unable to douse the old witty one-two-three as Puskás chanced upon the spot and with his rotund body's full consent rend open the candescent heat, the unavoidable Puskás straight beam cannonball sizzling inside over decades of the thoroughly dominant.

It is no more in the legends than as if in some colossal sports drama all along postwar history everywhere on tournaments' geography and conning the new times from the large Cold War politics of the late 1940s, the entire soccer revolution made real by a new race of outdoor athletes with the 1949-1956 'Magical Magyars' to 1958-1966 Real Madrid's peerless compositions, top-flight football seemed to culminate to its crowning stage after its re-invention and set records still altogether unreached. There among 20th Century lanes and paths at forward inside-left all postwar and 'modern football' took its cadence from Ferenc Puskás as the game found the tremendous power rocket player as the captain of the near invincible Hungarian 'Golden Team' that pronounced 'total-team' 'socialist football' chic and outmoded it all and as the key goalscorer at Real Madrid, Puskás' extraordinary double career flashing between gold levels presided over dream teams of the most elevated players and illustrated what it was to play the game accurately as a vision of joy and perfection.

During a busy decade of a difficult rebuilding world in the postwar era in the arc light and formative glow of nascent mass media with a global reach and increasingly networked newswires at the dawn of live television that meet audiences as never before made possible a new kind of connectedness and a new kind of culture that is called 'popular culture'. Around this time Puskás became the game's first superstar both at league and in the world game who foreruns the likes of Alfredo Di Stéfano, Pelé, Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona and it was Puskás who first spoke to and for this new era as his 'Golden Team' re-invented the game and telecommunications effectively shrank the world.

Mentally striding in to take the lead Puskás became an expert in the management of matches that revealed his calling as the darling 'golden boy' of the regime in communist Hungary. Many thought that no one had a keener relish for the texture of the game than Puskás whose agile intellect came with a precocious talent at an early age making the national team all of eighteen as a supreme possessor with a heroic scoring indulgence on the ball that succeeded in catching the eye of Europe.

Much of what Puskás would come to stand for was determined long before his playing days at Real Madrid. Before the 'Golden Age' of soccer in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s properly declared itself, Puskás, armed with his rhapsodic talent, matchless whistling fastball and insights in the Budapest Kispest team before he reached ripe manhood's brink of twenty-one years showed his true worth scoring 50 goals in 31 matches in the league to lead all players in the world. At present by the 1948-year Puskás had set the current of opinion that he had qualified as one of the elites in the game. His well-known journey at Kispest-Honvéd saw Puskás score 358 goals out of his 350 games that effected an immense enlargement for the club's international prestige and elaborated a climax of Budapest Honvéd as the finest club side in the world before Real Madrid and the Brazilian Santos. Already an initial career like this would have culminated with a first entry into Europe's pantheon of all time greats.

He is both extraordinary in the theme of his world-famed classics that are among the most colorful parts of the mid-century and in the amassed work of his throughput and succeeded in catching the flavor of a time and place in European history the sport shall never see again. The career of Puskás that stretched across the whole modern post-war period showed how a truly great player can reflect the varying developments of his age yet maintain an unmistakable individual sovereignty, unique and inimitable.

He had intuition with extra sensory awareness to grasp other sides' nuances with novel thinking and an encompassing eye in less than fifteen minutes of play by issuing a stream of instructions to align the team and in his younger years often yelling at players many years his senior as a 'playing coach’ solving ever-changing game vistas on the run. He had legendary assured urbanity and a smartness during the match's commotion and flux joined to the feel and rippling strength of his left leg that prized out the tightest defenses from distance done with a rocketed ball of honed dexterity.

A defining moment: the un-whistled and uncalled illegal flagrant rough mid-air interference foul on goalkeeping Gyula Grosics by Hans Schäfer in the 18th minute that tackled and brought down Grosics to the turf. Since Grosics was unfairly tackled the ill-guarded goal was scored upon by Rahn seconds later to re-make an ascendant 2-0 Magical Magyars lead into a heavily contested 2-2 match in the highest rated match of the 20th Century, the 1954 World Cup Final title game.

Puskás was a match symphony-maker, a conspicuous student of the game and a teacher of athletes and his presence was soon felt at Budapest Kispest in the 1945-46 year where he scored 36 goals in 34 matches as a future player that legend could sing of as a paragon of vitality bringing happiness directed by a wily uomo universale of renaissance dreams who became the sport's first world superstar.

Very few players had careers or stories to tell quite like Puskás for a number of occasions. In all that reporting of his career a common thread in playing days that made him unique, simply that there is an air of the precious about almost all that he did, a glinting Midas touch, everything he touched on the field turned to gold in his life's work. Puskás only played on three teams: Budapest Kispest-Honvéd, Hungary and Real Madrid, three teams that were to take turns in dominating his life amid their greatest successes in golden periods of their own with an elegant yet fiery competitor with gracious outgoing gentlemanly manners whose career crackled with re-inventive life.

After three leading parts of the gigantic career oeuvre of Puskás and beyond as one who distinguished himself favorably in managing teams on five continents, Puskás' life runs into many stories and Puskás' own personal journey is an entire odyssey. Not far from the roars of duty on the pitch Puskás was also somebody famously known to a great many people having managed on five continents and his coaching career takes a different telling.

How little the formative years sometimes tell about an individual's potentialities is exemplified by the fact that Puskás, who was known as Öcsi ('Sonny' or 'Little Kid Brother') in his youth were he mastered the game with a liberated intelligence and talent during the hardscrabble interwar years would lead a life of creativeness and wit, be involved in three of the most stupendous matches of the century from start to finish immersed in the atmosphere of the sensational that caused him to be ranked among the most celebrated players of all time and become a great sports figure of the classic past.

A whole generation will best remember Puskás as a great master player associated with five prestigious European Cup ('Champions League')' title matches while paired with iconic club players Alfredo Di Stéfano and Francisco Gento at Real Madrid. Playing alongside Di Stéfano and Gento from 1958-1964 Puskás was primarily the best and most effective top-flight goalscorer on the 20th Century's highest ranked top league team. By their insatiable passion and many dashes of brilliance showing more always in leading men by their hardworking exampling talents made these three energetic masters of the sport all time eminences. With three such famous steerers piloting events who met problems and dealt with solutions to set things right and doing the kinds of things that others could not Real Madrid reached heights with an insuperable pre-eminence over teams at the Bernabéu Stadium that defined the greatest league 'home-field advantage' in history after Puskás surpassed England's 90-year old legacy in 1953.

Another generation will joyously recall Puskás for his goals and enduring exploits with Budapest Honvéd and the Hungarian 'Golden Team' while teamed with Sándor Kocsis and Nándor Hidegkuti. There alongside Hidegkuti and Sándor Kocsis, Puskás formed the most powerful and greatest scoring trio and winning partnership in all international soccer history. Superlative big wins with Hungary in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956 became a revelation to the people of some great ecstatic sports order and were so shapely and heralded victories a whole new reinvented vision, an entire new conception seemed contained in those games that football became stronger, richer and more varied.

Hungary 2 : 0 Yugoslavia

August 2, 1952 in Helsinki.

(Puskás 70' + Assist | Czibor 88' )

1952 Summer Olympic Final

Hungary 3 : 0 Italy

May 17, 1953 in Rome.

(Hidegkuti 41' | Puskás 63', 68')

1948-1953 Central European International Cup Final

Hungary 9 : 0 South Korea

June 17, 1954 in Zürich. 1954 World Cup group.

(Puskás 12', 89' | Kocsis 24', 36', 50' | Palotás 75', 83' | Czibor 59' | Lantos 18')

Largest Win Margin In World Cup History | +9 Goals.

Hungary 8 : 3 West Germany

June 20, 1954 in Basel. 1954 World Cup group.

(Puskás 17' | Kocsis 3', 21', 69', 78' | Hidegkuti 52', 54' | J. Tóth 75')

West Germany's All Time Heaviest Loss

The captain of the unstoppable 'Golden Team', Puskás and Fritz Walter in the pennants exchange before the 8-3 emphatic rout of West Germany in group play at the 1954 World Cup. The 8-3 win is the all time heaviest loss for West Germany and was then a World Cup record for most combined goals.

***** The Final Placings of the 1947 Balkan Cup *
Final	Country	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
Gold	Hungary	4	0	0	+4.00
Silver	Yugoslavia	3	0	1	+1.00
Bronze	Romania	2	0	2	0.00
No. 4	Bulgaria	1	0	3	-2.25
Cup Top Scorer: Ferenc Deák (5 Goals) \| 3 Goals Each (3rd): Ferenc Puskás, Nándor Hidegkuti

***** The Final Positions of the 1948 Balkan Cup *****
Country	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
Hungary	4	1	1	+2.83
Yugoslavia	2	1	0	+1.00
Bulgaria	2	1	2	-0.20
Romania	2	1	1	-2.00
Cup Top Scorer: Ferenc Puskás (5 Goals) \| 4 Goals Each (2nd): Ferenc Deák, Béla Egresi

*** The Final Placings of the 1952 Summer Olympics ***
Final	Country	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
Gold	Hungary	5	0	0	+3.60
Silver	Yugoslavia	4	1	1	+2.17
Bronze	Sweden	3	0	1	+0.25
No. 4	West Germany	2	0	2	0.00
6 Goals: Sándor Kocsis (2nd) \| 4 Goals Each (4th): Ferenc Puskás, Péter Palotás

****** The Final Placings of the 1948-1953 Central European Cup ******
Final	Country	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
Gold	Hungary	5	1	2	+1.25
Silver	Czechoslovakia	4	1	3	+0.75
Bronze	Austria	4	1	3	-0.50
No. 4	Italy	3	2	3	+0.13
Cup Top Scorer: Ferenc Puskás (10 Goals) \| 7 Goals (2nd): Ferenc Deák

*** Pre-Game Goal Differentials Before 1954 World Cup Final ***
Country	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
Hungary	4	0	0	+4.50
West Germany	4	0	1	+2.00
Uruguay	3	0	2	+1.40
Austria	4	0	1	+1.00
Brazil	1	1	1	+1.00
Cup Top Scorer: Sándor Kocsis (11 Goals) \| 4 Goals (3rd): Nándor Hidegkuti \| 3 Goals, Ferenc Puskás

****** The Final Placings of the 1955-1960 Central European Cup ******
Final	Country	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
Gold	Czechoslovakia	7	2	1	+1.00
Silver	Hungary	6	3	1	+1.80
Bronze	Austria	4	3	3	0.00
No. 4	Yugoslavia	3	3	4	+0.80
Cup Top Scorer: Lajos Tichy (7 Goals) \| 5 Goals (2nd): Ferenc Puskás

*** Hungarian Rhapsody * * 49 Consecutive Games Undefeated * Win Percentage: 95 % Undefeated Percentage: 100 %**
Matches	Wins	Draws	Losses	Score For	Score Ag.	Score Diff.
49	44	5	0	+4.33	-1.22	+3.11
From June 4, 1950 - February 18, 1956 (1954 World Cup Final Not Included)

' The Magical Magyars | The Mighty Magyars | The Magnificent Magyars '

--- 'The Golden Team', 1945-1956 ---

Hungary 2 : 0 Yugoslavia

August 2, 1952 in Helsinki.

(Puskás 70' + Assist | Czibor 88')

1952 Summer Olympic Final

Hungary 3 : 0 Italy

May 17, 1953 in Rome.

(Hidegkuti 41' | Puskás 63', 68')

1948-1953 Central European International Cup Final

Hungary 9 : 0 South Korea

June 17, 1954 in Zürich. 1954 World Cup group.

(Puskás 12', 89' | Kocsis 24', 36', 50' | Palotás 75', 83' | Czibor 59' | Lantos 18')

Largest Win Margin In World Cup History | +9 Goals.

Hungary 8 : 3 West Germany

June 20, 1954 in Basel. 1954 World Cup group.

(Puskás 17' | Kocsis 3', 21', 69', 78' | Hidegkuti 52', 54' | J. Tóth 75')

West Germany's All Time Heaviest Loss

Vying Against the National Team Mountain NT Teams 1948-1956 Hungary versus Top World *No. 1-15 Elo-Ranked Teams* World Football Elo Ratings (1954 World Cup Final Not Included)
Match	Date	Venue	Occasion	Pre-Game Opp. Rank	Opposing Team	Score
1.	5.23.1948	Home	Balkan Cup	15	Czechoslovakia	2-1
2.	10.3.1948	Home	friendly	12	Austria	2-1
3.	5.8.1949	Home	Gero Cup	12	Austria	6-1
4.	6.12.1949	Home	Gero Cup	4	Italy	1-1
5.	6.19.1949	Away	friendly	3	Sweden	2-2
6.	10.16.1949	Away	friendly	12	Austria	4-3
7.	11.20.1949	Home	friendly	4	Sweden	5-0
8.	5.14.1950	Away	friendly	11	Austria	3-5
9.	10.29.1950	Home	friendly	11	Austria	4-3
10.	7.21.1952	Neutral	Olympic Grp	5	Italy	3-0
11.	7.28.1952	Neutral	Olympic SF	11	Sweden	6-0
12.	8.2.1952	Neutral	1952 Olympic Final	5	Yugoslavia	2-0
13.	4.26.1953	Home	friendly	12	Austria	1-0
14.	5.17.1953	Away	Gero Cup Final	11	Italy	3-0
15.	6.5.1953	Away	friendly	12	Sweden	4-2
16.	10.4.1953	Away	friendly	15	Czechoslovakia	5-1
17.	11.11.1953	Away	friendly	11	Austria	3-2
18.	11.15.1953	Home	friendly	13	Sweden	2-2
19.	11.25.1953	Away	'Match of Century'	3	England	6-3
20.	4.11.1954	Away	friendly	11	Austria	1-0
21.	5.23.1954	Home	*'Match of Century II'*	4	England	7-1
22.	6.20.1954	Neutral	WC Group	6	West Germany	8-3
23.	6.27.1954	Neutral	WC QFinal	3	Brazil	4-2
24.	6.30.1954	Neutral	WC SemiFinal	3	Uruguay	4-2
25.	11.14.1954	Home	friendly	6	Austria	4-1
26.	12.8.1954	Away	friendly	13	Scotland	4-2
27.	4.24.1955	Away	Gero Cup	7	Austria	2-2
28.	5.11.1955	Away	friendly	12	Sweden	7-3
29.	5.29.1955	Home	friendly	11	Scotland	3-1
30.	10.16.1955	Home	Gero Cup	7	Austria	6-1
31.	11.27.1955	Home	Gero Cup	11	Italy	2-0
32.	4.29.1956	Home	Gero Cup	7	Yugoslavia	2-2
33.	9.16.1956	Away	Gero Cup	5	Yugoslavia	3-1
34.	9.23.1956	Away	friendly	15	Soviet Union	1-0
35.	10.7.1956	Away	friendly	11	France	2-1
36.	10.14.1956	Away	friendly	7	Austria	2-0
36 Matches: 30 Wins, 5 Draws, 1 Loss Win Percentage: 90.27% Undefeated Percentage: 97.22%
By late 1954, Puskás has become the world leader for international goals that he achieved in the 'Match of the Century'. Another great example of how great and influential 'The Galloping Major' was, by playing in a heavily publicized prestige friendly on a sensational night under the bright lights against Billy Wright's Wolverhampton on Dec. 13, 1954, Puskás' Honvéd helped inspire in the European Cup ('Champions League') itself the following year in 1955.

The postwar renaissance age demanded a sports heralded game-changing powerhouse that was absolutely modern, winsome in approach and prim of no compromise and take-charging revolutionary as never before to resolutely outplay, outpass, outsprint and outvie and brave the greatest teams of the era.

From the world war's nadir in 1945 to the sport's zenith in 1956 and in 1966 with Real Madrid all postwar teams with Ferenc Puskás that rumbled along had grown élite to maximal strength from the earliest days immediately following the war in August of 1945 that by 1966 had overtopped all world-class teams of steel; — in the beginning the 'Golden Team', a huge bombardment of flexible key heavers of Puskás-Kocsis-Hidegkuti-Bozsik-Czibor that also reigned with a revolutionary Gyula Grosics-quarterbacked 'Iron Curtain' defense for seven years had outvied the old vintage pre-war game as his oracle renaissance national team forever re-invented soccer in the 'new era'.

Entered to race, the rainmaker magnifico gold of their ample goals like sporting catholic bells tolling this 'Golden Team' appeared with Ferenc 'Sonny' Puskás' debut and whose race began on August 20th ('Saint Stephen's Day') in 1945 in Budapest against world-ranked No. 7 Austria where Puskás scored first in a very big 5-2 win and as a full team by decade's end in 1949 — it's a national sports treasure utilization of Olympian dreams with the immensity of history-molding numbers of never attainable praise in rhapsody of the unbeatable charm of the magical Hungarian 'Golden Team' of excellently and cleverly playing appropriate players amid a whirlwind of golden sound and thrilling roars of huge audiences with climatic, unpriceable sensational scoring action who got the beauty of 'the beautiful game' right and tremendous.

From the world war's closing welter and turmoil Ferenc Puskás, who arrived to the national 'beautiful game' aged but eighteen as a charming and intelligent young man with Nándor Hidegkuti ('The Elder') in 1945, Ferenc 'Bamba' Deák in 1946, midfield all-time iron man József Bozsik and Midas goalkeeper Gyula Grosics in 1947, the bona fide natural aerial header and shooter Sándor Kocsis in 1948 and Zoltán Czibor ('The Mad Winger') in 1949 they alighted a groundbreaking hard-charging cheer-bringing game of spectacular passages brandishing beauty bolts of speed, finesse, true vigor and players of multi-sided genius and the hardest scoring bandwidth that has found no peer. By May 1953 it is the most powerful team in the world.

Exultantly performed as by vast composers 35.59% (+1/3) of their 59 matches (omitting the 1954 World Cup Final match) from 1949 to 1956 were won by 5 goals or more in débâcles and tour de force routs with an average win margin of +3.19 goals/game with an abundant heraldic prodigious vault of goals. Bred east of the mountains the decisively highest scoring and highest rated team (2232 Elo points) of all time; Puskás' dashing men of the Danube who grew up beyond the mountains from central Europe that is ultimately the 'Greatest Ever Association Football Team' in substance and surroundings with ease to enter the checkered mass attack full of thundering scoring tide with a prim defense that can battle and answer ran more melodious in hours prophetic with a triumphant tutti beyond what gorgeous summer knows for a 9-year historic, athletic, record-breaking reign of sports' precedents.

At Hungary in 1949 a new socialist health takes hold of an already powerful Puskás-led Hungarian team primed with new plot and rhyme as head manager Gustáv Sebes rebuilt it with a finer forge of goal besetting tactics and a very good goalkeeper-bulwarked defense that led the soccer world for seven years as the star-studded 'Golden Team' of hammering goalscoring bravado.

The triple honor and prize-winning beam of Ferenc Puskás ('Sonny', 'The Galloping Major', 83 goals), Sándor Kocsis ('The Man With The Golden Head', 75 goals), the specialists Nándor Hidegkuti ('The Elder', 'The Playing Father of Total Football', 39 goals) and super-substitute Péter Palotás (18 goals), earlier great Ferenc Deák ('Bamba', 29 goals) and later the master apprentice the good striker Lajos Tichy ('The Nation's Bomber', 51 goals) rammed them into a roaring juggernaut where a central enigma had been formed by the fabulous team of capital reserves: — the alluring false No. 9 cunningly withdrawn new motion metronome cracksmen of Péter Palotás and Nándor Hidegkuti, who like half engineers and keys open hundreds of doors of space to exploit and disorder accustomed defenses with prelude, chicane and timed chance runs. There these great players of skill, talents superb in technique fade other teams in new strengths, unhampered team mobility and tactical rigors of the polyvalent 3-2-5/3-2-1-4/4-2-4 formation in 'socialist football's' stronger existence charged with unrelenting and unalterable winning outscoring pathos.

In 'Magical Magyar' glide laid an absolute team totality simultaneity concert of purely-proceeding spirits in original concord energy, the prodigal national players of the people heroically a-blazing with unmatchable athletic esprit and élan scoring 4.36 goals/game (from May 1949 to February 1956 in 59 matches) that they conquered their field of aim and endowed the worldwide famous team with the glows and renowned glories of cosmic and dynamic features.

Of the crowds of great teams who came and went aloud in the raptured ears of men beheld Puskás' Hungarian 'Golden Team' within the circuit of European football there entering a seven-year reign of a national Hungarian side that was peerlessly the best team of them all during a doctrinaire and the most extravagant and cavalier age, but Puskás and his strike partner Sándor Kocsis transformed them as 'statistically the greatest ever'.

' The Match of the Century ' The Historic Hallmark Visionary Wastershed Landmark ' World Championship Decider ' Match Attendance: 105,0000 November 25, 1953 in London.
The Divine Titan Near Perfect Undefeated Maximum National Team of All-Time					'The Golden Team' May 8, 1949 to Nov. 24, 1953
Wins	Ties	Loss	Goals/Match	Goal Diff./Match	Wins	Ties	Loss	Goals/Match	Goal Diff./Match
36	3	0	5.23	+4.20	26	6	1	4.27	+3.18
Win Percentage: 96.15% Undefeated Percentage: *100% All Time* Since 1863**					Win Percentage: 87.88% Undefeated Percentage: 96.97%

*** ' The Matches of the Century I & II ' ***
Wins	Ties	Losses	Goal Diff. / Match
2	0	0	+4.50
Top Scorers (4 Goals): Puskás, Hidegkuti \| 2 Goals: Sándor Kocsis

Hungary 6 : 3 England

(Hidegkuti 1', 20', 53' | Puskás 24', 27' + 2 Assists | Bozsik 50')

Puskás scored 2 goals and made 2 assists and became the world record holder for most national goals with 60 goals in 50 internationals.

Hungary 7 : 1 England

England NT's heaviest defeat.

The Strength of Major Teams On The Road To The 1954 FIFA World Cup Final Hungary 7 - 0 Versus Top Ranked Teams With A Combined Best Form 200 Match Record Of: 155 Wins, 31 Draws, 14 Losses (85.25 Win %)
World Rank	Competed Against Teams	Wins	Draws	Losses	Win %	Hungary Score
No. 5 1944 Elo	Yugoslavia Last 23 Matches 1952 Olympic Title Won	16	3	4	76.09%	2-0
No. 11 1863 Elo	Italy Playing At Home Last 49 Matches 1948-1953 European Championship Won	36	11	2	84.70%	3-0
No. 3 2022 Elo	England All-Time Since 1863 Playing At Home Vs. Teams Outside British Isles All Time Maiden International Win At England	36	3	0	96.15%	6-3
No. 26 1677 Elo	South Korea All-Time Since 1948) All Time Largest Win Margin In World Cup	11	4	2	76.47%	9-0
No. 6 1957 Elo	West Germany Last 19 Matches All Time Heaviest West Germany Loss	14	3	2	81.57%	8-3
No. 3 2037 Elo	Brazil Last 29 Matches All Time World Cup's Physically Toughest & Most Brutal Match & Post-Game Ever	21	4	4	82.14%	4-2
No. 3 2018 Elo	Uruguay All-Time Since 1902 In All World Tournaments & Teams Outside Of South America All Time Maiden Non-South American Win Against Uruguay Since 1902	21	3	0	93.75%	4-2

On November 25, 1953 in the 'Match of the Century' it is the wonder game of the age. For these players led by the idyllic playmaking wiles of Puskás against England in London undefeated all time since 1863 comes the resplendent historic moment. It is the broad supreme super-spectacle of world sport broadcast to an immense international worldwide audience of radio and early live television coverage in Empire Wembley Stadium with 105,000 in attendance for the superincumbent team, England with the draught of vintage power. It is the old masterly invincible steamrolling heavy industrial 3-2-2-3 powerhouse mountain tower diamond team of football dreams of unearthly height with the legend-making titan team scoring 5.23 goals/match all time — beyond it the rarified zone, the Olympian Himalayas after a herculean sports feat achievement and a vista of eternal fame as heavily favored England clashed with the new technique of the Puskás-led visiting world-ranked No. 1 team.

This 'Match of the Century' was of a genuine world premier that arcs to a visionary game that virtually amounted to the sport's reinvention by blowing the game's new applauding scoring winds against the old savory, in vogue and definitive order of 'WM' (3-2-2-3) formation in the heralded game-changing historic and unrepeatable very famous 6-3 win there the favorited player Puskás scored two goals and made two assists and had reached soccer's summit touchstone and where he left his merry world-record treasure.

In this grand unofficial 'World Championship Decider' Puskás with an eye for the unique situation leading his heralds fired the goal heard around the athletic world with his 'Goal of the Century' that is a beautiful dreamed-out sculpture of skill and a bugle of Puskás' famous arrival as the world's greatest player and new No. 1 international record-holder with 60 goals in 50 matches. It became soccer's first new powerful and spectacular manifesto and a sport-shaping master match prophetic of the future that perhaps all 'modern football' can date from it. To beat the mountain tower team of football dreams 6-3 in London and 7-1 in Budapest gives the team and its captain astral fame and genius.

For seven years that swept the boulevards of fame from 1949-1956 in a famous 60-game stand that hallowed their cause all national teams founder to new supercharged qualities that is too well made, the motoric fierce tang of aptly turned passes, prim specialties and outperformance of famous athletes of the nation doubtless getting near their goal with goals that could not be got back nor resolving the stalwart and vaunted 'Total Team' Hungarian defense competent to praise and too little known with new acquired wisdom.

There a famous derring-do pioneering virtuoso goalkeeper, Gyula Grosics ('The Black Panther') bolstered and steadied the last line as a late intercepting defensive runner off the goal line under the bar with his spars and long sorties to teach succeeding revelations to all modern defenses. By early 1956 the physical gestalt of the mighty re-inventing postwar renaissance and 'socialist football's dream team of the ages crackling with game stood tangibly proud and undeniably great for all to see like a gothic building that generated life. The titan team had lost one game since June 1950, the 1954 World Cup Final on the 4th of July to West Germany.

As one could have Puskás captained a sensationally talented, near-perfect winning super-team that came to life that lost one match over the course of six years due to no reasons of his own or his team following a number of bizarre unhoped for happenings, two bad goal contentious referee decisions that went in favor of West Germany and cover-ups that deprived his team to be looked upon with general acceptance as the greatest team that ever was.

In the mythic and legendary 1954 World Cup Final Puskás and his teammates are characters out of a long unwritten about scandal with the game's sense of incompleted unfinished reach to initiating the question where reputed doping plays a part in championship level integrity including his team being sapped by two officiating calls when in the early minutes played a dozen superb persons to an apparent world title victory after leading 2-0. The controversial 1954 world title match ideally should have been won 1-0 by default in accords with the contemporary laws and standards of the game or, if ideally refereed, won 3-2 as here swoops in the game's half-injured lord Ferenc Puskás with his two legitimate master goals in the 6th and 87th minutes. Some days before Real Madrid's fantastic triumph over Eintracht Frankfurt in the spring of 1960 Puskás had publicly voiced a mighty secret after witnessing performance-enhancing syringes in the West Germans' post-game locker rooms.

On May 11, 1955 in a huge 7-3 away win over Sweden in Stockholm where Puskás scored two goals and Kocsis scored three goals this great team inherited an only first, the historic and unrepeatable occasion of fielding Puskás and Sándor Kocsis as the top two goal-leading national world record-holders who would play in tandem until Oct. 14, 1956 in a 2-0 away win over world-ranked No. 7 Austria in their final match for Hungary.

At Hungary, a great deal of their success located Puskás to be the center of most things involving the team as a sharp operator both on the field and off with a fine grasp of public relations. The indisputably star player was the uplifter of an already great Hungarian side who drove his teams with a demanding love for winning to heights unrivaled and raise their minds to brave thinking that gave spur to his country's postwar football flowering. The quintessential fact is that with Puskás at the helm Hungary became the most powerful sporting force in the world that lost a single game in six years.

Ferenc Puskás late heroic 2nd goal in the 1954 Final that was very controversially ruled offside after a minute side line consultation after the fact. Many who witnessed the near miracle goal also claimed that it was done fairly and 'on-side' to tie the match 3-3.

--- Manager Gustáv Sebes ---

A Riddle Sphinx From The FIFA 1954 World Cup Final

In Question Of 5 1/2 Very Questionable, Compromising Team Selection Shakeups Tied To Possible Collusion

The Manager Who May Have Purposely Cast, Set Up And Upended The 1954 World Title Final Match With 5 1/2 Very Bad Controversial Disconcerting Decisions In The 11-Player Lineup To Compound With Very Tough, Difficult, Competing West Germany Issues Of Halftime Intermission Supercharged Amphetamine Doping That Boosted The Winning Opposition With Newly Invented Fast Revolutionary Blazing West German Adidas Interfacing Shoes That Outperformed During Heavy Rainy Weather That Reduced The Playing Surface To Adverse Slick Unsure Slippery Conditions Along With Two Major Contestable Issues Of 2 Wrongly Granted Goals As Something Very Costly And Insurmountable That Ensured Powerhouse Cold-War Communist Hungary's Loss In Two Highly Contentious Referee Decisions

In Question Of 5 1/2 Highly Suspect, Very Unusual And Likely Tampered Compromising Team Selection Shakeup Decisions Tied To Possible Pre-Match Arranged Mutual Contracted Future Awarded Lengthy Long Termed Recompensed Collusion In A Secreted Cold-War Era Inter-States West German-Hungary Bargained Extraordinary Favors Granted Exchange Perhaps Authored By Non-Sporting Political Decisions

Extending Alongside The Golden Age Of Worldwide Broadcast Television That Began In 1953 Since The Historic Record-Breaking 6-3 Win Feat On November 25, 1953, Hungary Had Became The World's First Highly Publicized And Broadcasted Live Televised Famous Real Superstar Powerhouse Crackerjack Team Of Hammering Goalscoring Bravado That Reached Into Spectacled Sporting Fame From Nov. 25 And Had Rocketed To Stratospheric Zenith Unstoppable Rarified Knockout Élite Being The Most Surmounting And All-Carrying In The Sport With 34 Wins, 6 Draws And 1 Defeat Since May Of 1949 Scoring 4.46 Goals-Per-Match With The Achieved All-Time World National Teams Peak Record Of 2232 Elo Points Like The True Surety Of Steamrolling Real Destiny

IF True:

Gustáv Sebes May Have Purposely Cast In 5 1/2 Ill-Advised And Very Controversial Disconcerting Decisions With Colluded Pre-Arranged Setup To Angle To Upend The 1954 World Title Final Match With The Players Lineup To Compound With Very Tough, Difficult, Competing West German Issues Of Halftime Intermission Supercharging Amphetamine Doping That Boosted The Winning Opposition With New Pioneering Fast Revolutionary Blazing West German Adidas Interfacing Mercury Shoes That Excelled And Outperformed During Heavy Rainy Weather That Reduced The Playing Surface To Adverse Slick Unsure Parlous Conditions With The Match Containing 2 Major Contestable Issues Of 2 Wrongly Granted Goals As Something Very Costly And Insurmountable That Ensured The Only Defeat In A 6-Year Span For Powerhouse Cold-War Hungary In Two Highly Contentious Referee Decisions

Extending Alongside The Golden Age Of Worldwide Broadcast Television That Began In 1953 Since The Historic Record-Breaking 6-3 Win Feat On November 25, 1953, Hungary Had Became The World's First Highly Publicized And Broadcasted Famous Real Superstar Powerhouse Team Of Hammering Goalscoring Bravado That Reached Into Spectacled Sporting Fame From Nov. 25 And Had Rocketed To Stratospheric Zenith Unstoppable Rarified Élite Being The Most Surmounting And All-Carrying In The Sport With 34 Wins, 6 Draws And 1 Defeat Since May Of 1949 Scoring 4.46 Goals-Per-Match With The Achieved All-Time World National Teams Peak Record Of 2232 Elo Points Like The True Surety Of Steamrolling Real Destiny

Sebes May Have Helped Purpose An Exciting Idealistic To Idyllic Romantically Scripted All-Time Talents Celebrity Status Heroic Famous Awesome Staged Hard Performance Showcase That Is Etched Historic Indelible To Be Memorialized Forever In Top Sporting Portraiture In An Super Iconic Unforgettable Post-War Enduring Phoenix Athletic Cold-War Era Two Top Teams' Mutual Beneficial Renaissance Cinderella Fairy Tale Storybook Fantastic Fantasist Fabulous First Live Worldwide Televised World Cup Extravaganza In An Galvanizing Suspense-Filled Monochrome World Broadcasted Vindicating Dramatic Blockbuster All-Incredible Epochal Final And Made Illusion Of A Storied And Enchanting 0-2 Down-And-Outer Score To Enact An Allowed Thrilling Late High Flourish Comeback Revival To Leave A Stunning And Enrapturing 3-2 Cause Célèbre Miracle World Winner Which Was Also Left Purposefully Ajar With Open-Ended Emerging New Clues, Points, Issues And Sterling Proofs In The Grand Total Landmark Watershed Epic David Versus Goliath Titanic Upset That Was Sports-Changing To Become Much Heralded And Discussed And Deeply Resonating In A Sensational National-Cultural-Sporting-Economic-Spiritual-Political Inspirational Millieu In A Post-Modern New Zeitgeist Boosting Changing Transitional Era Defining And Re-Defining Top Classed Semi-Secret Title Match Now That In The Long Term Yielded Fair And Opened Disclosures With A Match That Can Never Fade That Was Also Emplaced And Programmed In With Wise Assuaging And Consented To (For At Fault Game-Fixing Conscience Easing And Soothing Reasons In The 1954 Made Bargain) Of Being Just Part 1/2 Cover-Up That Brings Smiling Or Askance Half-Smiling Feelings In This Monumental Hallmark For Sherlock Holmes To Find Some Big Happy Trails On Because Good Man Gustáv Sebes Perhaps Only Rigged One And Just A Sole False Setup Vastly Important Match For It To Lose With Never Any Other Before Or Any After, And Truly Undetectably For Sebes, This Titanic Singular 'Game' Was His Only Feat With Never Any Warm Trails Alongside Himself For The Inquiring Astute Public Because He Occurred It Only There At That Stupendous Solitary 1954 Final That Speaks Of His Profound Delivered Quiet Integrities

Mihály Tóth

(In Question Of Being Installed As An Unintegral Acting Dummy Non-Player In The 1954 World Cup Final)

Most Worst Included Selection To Jeopardize Superbly Honed Team Symphonies And Concerted Efforts As A Very Subpar Acting Non-Player And Illegitimate Fraud Inserted Dummy Of Total Inexperience And Lack Of Playing Integrity Of Imposed Risk That Contributed To Help Lose The 1954 World Cup Final

Physical Height:

Slowed, Short Diminutive Player: --- 5'4" Height

Scoring Ratio Full Career In Domestic League As Assigned Forward (1944-1963):

240 Matches | 41 Goals = 0.16 Goals/Match

Demonstrably Dreadful Subpar Scoring Competence At Any Level At Any Given Era In The Sport

Speculation, Controversy, Collusion, Conspiracy Surmise:

The Presumed Surmised Very Weak Link Team Defiler, Despoiler, Ruiner And Purposed Dummy Sapper Who Assisted To Help Overturn And Upset Namely With The Total Greenhorn Inexperience Of His 4th NT Match Who Geared To Underperform, Undermine And Slow Down The All-Carrying Torrentially Talented 1954 Hungary Team In The 1954 World Cup Final

The 87' Minute Long Center-Left Through Ball Pass By Mihály Tóth To Ferenc Puskás That Sprang Puskás Free And Open Clear To Dashingly Score With Legitimate Cavalier Aplomb To Tie Late 3-3 Was Denied By Botched Refereeing That Cheated The Proper Winning Side Of Two Goals Which Under Ideal Expert Upholding Refereeing Of Honest Full Integrity Should Have Ended 3-2 In Hungary's Favor For World Championship Gold

Former FIFA President Jules Rimet pays homage to two great Midas-players, the greatest player in the world, Puskás and Gyula Grosics, the greatest goalkeeper in the world prior to the kickoff of at 1954 World Cup Final.

' The Greatest National Duo '

Legendary manager Béla Guttmann with

Sándor Kocsis and Puskás. The greatest and

most prolific national trio of all-time

was Puskás-Kocsis-Hidegkuti who

tallied a combined 194 career goals for Hungary on the

highest rated football team of all-time.

Madrid, Spain in the early 1960s.

Ferenc Puskás, as player or manager, is associated with six European Cup ('Champions League') title match appearances. Hungarian players and head managers have won the European Cup on seven occasions (1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1966, 1972, 1973), and came in second place in the European Cup Finale four times (1961, 1962, 1964, 1971).
Year	Star Players or Team Head Manager	Team	Type of Championship Final	Opponent
1959	Alfredo Di Stéfano / Ferenc Puskás / Gento	Real Madrid	European Cup Finale	Stade de Reims
1960	Ferenc Puskás / Alfredo Di Stéfano / Gento	Real Madrid	European Cup Finale	Eintracht Frankfurt
1960	Ferenc Puskás / Alfredo Di Stéfano / Gento	Real Madrid	Intercontinental Cup Finale (inaugural)	Penarol, Uruguay
1961	Sándor Kocsis, Zoltán Czibor, Lászlo Kubala	Barcelona	European Cup Finale	Béla Guttmann, manager of Benfica
1962	Ferenc Puskás / Alfredo Di Stéfano / Gento	Real Madrid	European Cup Finale	Béla Guttmann, manager of Benfica
1964	Ferenc Pusksás / Alfredo Di Stéfano / Gento	Real Madrid	European Cup Finale	Inter Milan
1966	Amancio / Ferenc Puskás / Gento	Real Madrid	European Cup Finale	Partizan Belgrade
1971	Ferenc Puskás, head manager	Panathinaikos	European Cup Finale	Ajax
1971	Ferenc Puskás, head manager	Panathinaikos	Intercontinental Cup Finale	Nacional, Uruguay
1972	István Kovács, head manager	Ajax	European Cup Finale	Inter Milan
1972	István Kovács, head manager	Ajax	Intercontinental Cup Finale	Independiente, Argentina
1973	István Kovács, head manager	Ajax	European Cup Finale	Juventus
1973	István Kovács, head manager	Ajax	European Super Cup Finale (inaugural)	Glasgow Rangers

--- The Real Madrid Years, 1958-1966 ---

The Highest Scoring Top Champions Major Tournament League Team of All-Time *** 1959-1960 Real Madrid * 1960 Top Division European Champion 1960 World Club Intercontinental Champion 1959-1960 Spanish Primera División Silver Medal**
Star Catalyst M.V.P.	Puskás' Tournament Bestowal	Team Goals	Gls./Match	Goals Ags.	Goal Diff.	Goal Diff./Match	Puskás' Full 1959-60 Season Campaign
Ferenc Puskás 1959-1960 Spanish Primera División Scoring M.V.P.	12 goals in 7 matches (1.71 goals/game) European Cup Scoring M.V.P.	31	+4.43	-10	+21	+3.00	1.29 goals/game 49 goals in 38 matches
	12 goals + 6 Assists: 2.57 G + A / Match	2.57 G + A / Match ÷ 4.43 Team Goals/Match = Puskás Scoring Play Team Bandwidth % = 58.01%

Perhaps the foreign, narrow, rigid socialist world in which he lived was constructed to provoke the rebelliousness latent in Puskás' spirit. Later estranged from his homeland due to the reprisals that were the fallout of the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolt and what might have awaited him for his refusal to return from abroad Puskás took that step that constituted a temptation to many, defecting from 1956 Hungary to escape the vindictive post-Revolt repression that followed back home.

The biggest name in Hungary, the captain and the pride of the 'Golden Team' had become a persona non grata by the communist authorities in Hungary after his defection and he was given an 18-month ban from playing by FIFA by demands of the new post-1956 Revolt Hungarian communist regime. Interspersed with problems of adjustment which faced him in language and customs, Puskás was adrift and languishing in exile his career and fortune apparently behind him but had decided to remain a player and who dreamed of going back to be the greatest, he was determination's totem.

On the wrong side of thirty and serving an 18-month ban from FIFA, Puskás, the famous epicurean was now mostly thought out of shape and in the twilight of his playing days. He has the capacity for change and sought to understand his new environment which molds the local mind and soon rose out of limbo and met the request of owner Santiago Bernabéu to find employ in the greatest club and one the richest sports institutions in the world, Real Madrid at the height of its powers to begin a second consecutive and stunning double career.

***** The Greatests *****

Real Madrid's 'Very Best and Greatests'

Major Players by Goal Ratio (minimum 171 total goals)

(Update 5.5.2021)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Real_Madrid_C.F._records_and_statistics

Ferenc Puskás with English pioneering legend Arthur Rowe, manager of Crystal Palace and advocate of the 'push and run' style and Alfredo Di Stéfano in 1962. Arthur Rowe was employed in Hungary as a consultant and a manager in 1938-1940 and also gave a series of lectures on the merits of the 'WM' system.

Real Madrid Rank	Star Player	Total Goals	Total Matches	Goal Ratio	Year Active
No. 1. Gold	Cristiano Ronaldo	450	438	1.03	2009-2018
No. 2. Silver	Ferenc Puskás	242	262	0.92	1958-1966
No. 3. Bronze	Alfredo Di Stéfano	308	396	0.78	1953-1964
No. 4	Hugo Sanchez	208	282	0.74	1985-1992

All Time Top Ace Crackerjack Goalscorers In The Champions League (Minimum: 35 Goals) (dated: 11.02.2022)
List of UEFA Champions League top scorers - Wikipedia
*All-Time*	Player	Matches	Goals	Goal Ratio	Puskás In Cup Finals
No. 1 Gold	Ferenc Puskás	41	36	.878	7 goals in 3 Finals *(all time* co-record) 2.33 goals/Final**
No. 2 Silver	Alfredo Di Stéfano	58	49	.845
No. 3 Bronze	Robert Lewandowski	111	91	.820
No. 4	Lionel Messi	161	129	.80

Crackerjack Seasons with Real Madrid

'Pancho' Puskás would score 156 goals in 180 in all La Liga matches and in his second season lead Real Madrid in team scoring for five straight years, achieve 5 national championships, earn Spain's vaunted Primera división's Pichichi MVP trophy four times, score 49 goals across all his 41 Copa del Rey matches and who played in European Cup tournament games better than perhaps anyone has seen by scoring an amazing 36 goals in the European Cup (Champions League) in 41 high-profile contests and has the all time best goal ratio in the European Cup tournament past 35 goals.

' The Greatest ' All-Time Ace Crackerjacks In The Spanish Cup (Copa del Rey) (Minimum: 30 Goals) source: Top goalscorers in Copa del Rey history (besoccer.com)
All Time Rank	Star Player	Matches	Goals	Ratio
Gold	Rogelio	36	45	1.25
Silver	Ferenc Puskás	41	49	1.20
Bronze	Morilla	31	35	1.13
No. 4	Zarra	74	81	1.09
Puskás In Spanish Cup Finals: 4 goals in 3 Finals (1962 Cup Winner)

' The Greatest '

Historic Hallmark Climatic Sensational Top Championship Landmark

Real Madrid 7 : 3 Eintracht Frankfurt

Press Described: One of the all time greatest ever matches

Match Attendance: 127,000

(Di Stéfano 20', 23, 73' | Puskás 46', 56', 60', 71')

It is the climatic top world club championship wonder game of the age. One year away from becoming the 20th Century's top rated franchise, Real Madrid with 'Pancho' Puskás furnishing 58% of the scoring play throughput on the highest scoring ever European Cup ('Champions League') title winning side as exciting dream powerhouse 1960 Real Madrid sensationally routs Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 where 'Pancho' has his very best game championship tournament match ever as he scored the yet record with 4 goals.

For Puskás, who captained Kispest-Honvéd and Hungary, Real Madrid joyfully meets a new translation as Puskás lead Real Madrid in scoring for five straight seasons and had 25 or more goals each full campaign for six years beginning from his first in 1958 and disported the strongest drive cast from a left foot, the whizzing cannonball intoned with relish that splits the defense with a stunning accuracy.

Magnifying and applying comes 31-year-old Puskás, the old camerado, and there joins a group of superior circuit at Real Madrid who have passed their prelude. Putting in higher claims for greatness and a new tangible good, their incredibly strong game burgeoned by Puskás-Di Stéfano-Gento, a swift-streaking full-sized engine speeding with superstars for Puskás it was a new superbly rising apex. Making appointments with all great first-division sides abroad or at home at the Bernabéu Stadium they are the sierra launching a national top-division verve that stands leagues off anything that came before or after.

At the Bernabéu Stadium, like no three alike in Puskás-Kocsis-Hidegkuti at Hungary (1948-1956), Puskás-Di Stéfano-Gento (1958-1964) were a belaureled story and they were rare, century-wide talents foiling others with a long stretch of losses in a world-record 121 (Feb. 1957- March 1965) undefeated league matches in sports history's greatest franchise 'home-field advantage' — the unalterable winning pathos charged with sensational Puskás, Di Stéfano, Gento in rugged fluid spaces in the make of the prodigious Real Madrid side threshing out 121 back-to-back undefeated league home matches as an all time unsurpassed historic achievement.

It is here in form, plan, union, plain excellence seeing it through the vigor of their names in full swing of glory ever-returning spring for six years that hit the sports world with their ripe renown. Here visiting league sides are taken and tossed where they pull the exceedingly superb playing wires with all the thrusts at midfield to set an emblazoned zone for the clean favored legend press of Puskás-Di Stéfano-Gento as visiting teams were scorched by the hot scores of the greatest and most decorated strike trio of them all playing out the winning lightning, the perfect top-division order trusted to Puskás-Di Stéfano-Gento.

At the Bernabéu, with the sternest defense on earth led by the great José Santamaría, the legendary instant defensive conductor all over the game signifying sureness the team unfolded undefeated home seasons for the world-record eight years. With Puskás, Di Stéfano and Gento raking the broad field with reverent feet and with the last conquests of their eye, out of the talent dimness of every side opposite equals the Real Madrid magnificent advance in picture perfect pride and drilling imagination right through the opposition with sweet speed — the journeywork of the stars in football's perfect day.

To roll the thunder from his vigorous left-foot, to see that team power is folded in wondrous interplay, to conquer Europe and the world with another exceptional team after the Hungarian 'Golden Team' amid a renewed showered acclaim was the folkloric legend of Puskás.

By far the best considered players among the supreme to play in Europe last century were Puskás, Alfredo Di Stéfano, Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona. From the other far side of Europe would come Puskás to meet Di Stéfano, the greatest club player of all, on the same side in a storied centering of two iconic careers to begin another adventure in his second act, and a stander on high, the best of the two winningest, important, and quintessential teams in history would include the famously dynamic Ferenc Puskás.

Real Madrid's 'decade of dominance' from 1955-1966 of which Puskás was a major part (from 1958-1966) is considered by historians to be the greatest era for any national top-division team that saw them enter eight European Cup championship title games, winning six major world trophies; and amid some of the fulfillments of the greatest 1st division offensive line (Puskás-Di Stéfano-Gento-Kopa-Rial) ever concerted massive with conjoining power advancing the due series and an unbending defense contending to excel led by a defensive superstar of the game, José Santamaría, made them the most famous team in the world.

Like the 'Magical Magyars', in 1958, Puskás found himself on a perfectly lauded, superbly destined, rightly charged sport-shaping team in Real Madrid, a full-dazzling side victoriously careering through the Spanish league and the newly minted European Cup for the solid prizes of the game, winners of the first three European Cup titles, a new team dominating previous ones driving the strong works amid vistas of glory just as positive and real as the 'Golden Team' of the 1950s.

The team that Puskás joined (1958-1967) were to splendidly press forward with glad scoring, pacing miles and miles each game with undeniable skill, health and power to five European Cup ('Champions League') title matches and five national championships. Replenished with new-found powers and vastly fuller with the joy of the increase of the solid roll of prolific and vital Puskás, the team, receivers of new scoring stamina, put Real Madrid on a perfect equality or better than any other nonpareil franchise in history and forever become a grand producing franchise.

At a time when players think of retirement, Puskás faced a daunting challenge of learning a new language and culture in the distinct new world of Francisco Franco's Spain at variance with the communist world from where he was coming. But with the gift of confidence and the right mental attitude Puskás soon endeared himself to everyone around him. More important he got along well with on-field boss and great Argentine star Alfredo Di Stéfano, the greatest player in the world at the time who was never the easiest man to know and who could be distancing to those he failed to get on with.

The driver at Real Madrid when Puskás arrived was Di Stéfano, then the regular captain of the team who was a man enthroned and who could really make the team perform. With ego and cheek being part of the charm, Alfredo Di Stéfano, was the most determined and best footballer in the world this side of Puskás who dominated life at Real Madrid that won the European Cup the first three times after the competition opened. But at first Puskás who earned a life of the most perfect satisfaction at Honvéd and Hungary as captain could not feel so fully in harmony with his new enterprise. Having carried Honvéd and Hungary to heights never reached before, would his career be convertible towards far loftier activities abroad?

His joyous appetite which he has very well developed commonly fetches him and after early frustration with his weight in his first season, Puskás eventually loses the pounds and started scoring richly so that by the final game of the season against Granada he was on even terms with Di Stéfano for goals with both men neck-and-neck atop the league scorers' table. In his unique situation and realizing he needed to gain a close acquaintance and the friendship of the great Argentine star, in one scene during the match against Granada, Puskás, who neglected little opportunity to knock it in himself when the net was open to him, took the occasion to lay the ball off for Di Stéfano to score as a thing worth doing to foster happy concord with the brilliant willful player considered by many the best in the world.

This well-rounded gesture and great personal deed where Puskás' regard for Di Stéfano outran his own competitive nature made Di Stéfano that year's top league goalscorer. Puskás was every hour a gentleman and to love the public, to be a master of a nobler mind with a life-affirming substantial hospitality was Puskás. The great Real Madrid team began to recognize that they were meeting the real Puskás for the first time and once more he is the new person drawing towards greatness.

Soon Puskás reached the right physical condition and again became a sunshot revelation cutting the jocund scoring sparkle with that peerless left foot soon scoring a greater number of goals than Di Stéfano himself to earn a high and prominent place in a talented constellation. A particular image of the player went with such panache and Puskás’ nicknames in Hungary of 'Galloping Major' and 'Öcsi' (Sonny) now affectionately were termed into the Spanish 'Pancho' and was also given the impressive name of the 'Little Booming Cannon' as he assumed a position of foremost rank among the great players in the advanced and sophisticated game.

Club football scarcely attained such status of dominance than that of Real Madrid during the late 1950s and 1960s when Puskás played for them. The years at Madrid exposed a Puskás increasingly chiseled to meet the physical demands on a world-renowned side in a second blooming of success near middle life who is working his passage to the center in a modern commercially oriented age and grew lean while he assailed eight seasons to become Real Madrid's best major player weighed by goal-ratio of the century. Winning five Spanish championships along with way Puskás became a four-time Pichichi Trophy (the Spanish Primera División's top goalscorer) incandescent forward in tandem with Di Stéfano to form the basis for the greatest double act world club football has ever seen and became illustrious among the players at Real Madrid.

Here Puskás offered his style to everyone and helps tell them their destination. Just before Puskás' retirement the club was again crowned by the top championship sport with the fame of heroes advancing on real ground toward the measureless ocean of all time greatness that took ostensible applause and exaltation for there was nothing before mightier than they were. That year their renown reverberates through soccer's grandest scenery as 'The FIFA Club Team of the Century'.

Duly the great eleven appear in public in the proud and passionate city on the great Real team that has no conceivable failures that loss cannot touch at home and proceed the eleven around their well-beaten Spanish and European counterparts for eight years; completer, dauntless, masterful, ample, never-surpassed, forever forward, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, a sunny race of footballing men. With sudden gleams they pass, score and are gone to swiftly pass picturesque groups of teams, journeyers in uniforms of pure white over eight consecutive seasons undefeated at the Bernabéu. A vast camaraderie interlocks all, they were dynamic men, debonair, wholly excellent and admirable.

If Di Stéfano kindled the engine as the 'starter' to the Real Madrid team and paved the way with his sumptuous zigzagging moves in broad zones Puskás was the sizzling conclusive goal-finisher with the final responsibility of leveling the cannonball shotmaking after breaching the final lines. Together with the inexhaustible Di Stéfano scooting obliquely high and low between the goal-zone and midfield, he and Puskás produced a giantized image of Real Madrid complete with incontestable fantastic examples of each that transported Real Madrid into an utterly different kind of club. He and Di Stéfano formed the 'card school' in the clubhouse making sense in and among themselves to clean up against the younger players on the team and transmitting the same type of reckoning charge on the field who settled into a friendship ritual at the end of won matches of 'keep-away' playing the ball back and forth among them to wound down the game clock.

With the Puskás & Di Stéfano double portrait at Real Madrid like the unrivaled duo of Puskás & Sándor Kocsis at Hungary whose constant blaze was undone in 1956 with their defection, the team could prevail legitimately as history’s finest and most successful club enterprise that made home audiences see successive scenes of these two great standard-bearers exuberantly pulling every team astray with as much gusto and zest as could be had on rich running days. With Puskás, who stood sole among men for most international goals with 83 with the Hungarian 'Golden Team', audiences again saw a never-surpassed team in the 20th century.

The Inaugural World Club Landmark

Real Madrid 5 : 1 Peñarol

The Unsurpassable Six Summits At Its Peak

Match Attendance: 90,000

Puskás: 2', 8' + 2 Assists | Di Stéfano: 3' | Gento: 54' | Herrera: 54'

With 'Pancho' Puskás at his playing best prime amid the glorious and great dynamic unprecedented world famous franchise who command the inaugural in the 1960 Intercontinental Cup to be the very highest and first great mountain after achieving 5 straight European Cups and a world club world title.

Football Club Elo Ratings

Puskás was considered the indispensable man of campaigns helping bequeath to Real Madrid a bevy of European Cup title match appearances, five in all, three of which were won by Real Madrid, including one that begot the famous 7-3 rout of Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960 and a 'top division franchise world championship' in 1960 to win once more over the whole world's renown. Certainly, in that most famous world franchise-making European Cup finals in 1960 Puskás maintained his magical power and old divine strength and registers a sophisticated sense of a master goalscoring legend that sensational 1959-1960 season (scoring 49 goals in 38 total matches, 1.29 goals/game) and to record the second half of his life at Real Madrid is to record his re-acquisition of world-class status and his transformation into a public living legend.

Ever unspent in his stride from one far summit to another in the great tradition of the European Cup during the time he played for Honvéd and Real Madrid, few players have put such an indelible imprint on tournament events as Puskás had. A resounding trait associated with Puskás was being at his imaginable best in the biggest of games where his inescapable goalscoring virtues stood confessed and he seldom seemed to have missed anything, scoring 42 goals in 47 matches in all top-division European tournament games and the quality of that work was always superior. Particularly in these extravagant top-echelon games Puskás had given out the most singular performances and produced so accurate a stretch of goals of serious dreaming intensity that he became the all-time tournament leader in the European Cup for goal-ratio past 35 scores, an achievement still unmatched in the field as of 2021.

The quintessential fact that Puskás set the thing that is the supreme, casting the pulses of the indispensable scoring to vivify all and unclenched the gates in the European Cup tournament so that no team ever afterward could proceed to match them the century. Burnt into gold points on the supreme theme of the European Cup Puskás here amazingly scores 36 goals in 41 European Cup tournament matches that he entered and who scored the record, 7 goals in two European Cup finals. Puskás who in the 1960-61 season scored an everlasting 15 goals in the Spanish Cup in 9 matches and scored a Real Madrid record 12 goals in the European Cup also scored a Real Madrid yet-record six goals in a Primera división match and became the oldest ever Real Madrid player at age 38 and 233 days and the team's oldest goalscorer the day that was his very last league match for the team.

Real Madrid 7 : 3 Eintracht Frankfurt

The 1960 European Cup Final

The Highest Scoring Major Tournament Champion Team Of All-Time

Puskás' Greatest Game At Real Madrid

It is not every man who can produce works of universal renown of exceptionally broad appeal to build out football's richest legacies consecrated by time as those created by Ferenc Puskás.

It is amazing to what extent Puskás' contributions help shape the contemporary European top champion-level sport as is done by this major giver of the ruling goal. Sheer through intuition and intellect that scanned consummately, of great bestriding will and his very fine powerful scoring poise bequeathed to Puskás alone beyond the prowess of what an average soccer player naturally does, with Puskás all events fusing once and for all into the grandest highest scoring European Cup (Champions League) championship team of all time to re-enact the old wonderous magic in the totality of the 1959-1960 Real Madrid team. 1959-1960 dream powerhouse Real Madrid with Puskás, Di Stéfano, Gento, the greatest top division franchise trio of all time outpacing power, finesse and speed, there are electric stresses across all succumbing defenses, it's Real Madrid at zenith's top edge.

On May 18, 1960, in Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland came a game gathered in triumph the most celebrated encounter in European Cup Final history played with a competence and superb finish that it has no precedent nor equal.

On May 18, 1960, a match known to many people in the 20th Century, a very famous match drawing an audience of over 127,000 and Real Madrid bringing to the event their multiple superstars and playing in front of a background of incessant roaring chorus of the audience marveling at everything great and magnificent in Real Madrid, the celebrated grand title match that acquires a heralded sports significance. It is the wonder game of the age. 1959-1960 Real Madrid with Ferenc Puskás was everything it was meant to be and everything it symbolized to proceed all other teams in the record books as Puskás again came on the truest ease of his greatness.

All-Time Highest Win Ratio In A Single International Season For World Club Finalists

source: xtrahistory.blogspot.com/2014/04/Record-Statistics.html

Key Catalyst Player: Ferenc Puskás

No. 1) 9 Real Madrid Matches: + 2.79 Average Goal Win

Only a few players could be expected to have such an experience not twice but three times and have their lives transformed by it and Puskás was one of them. For Real Madrid this was to be their fifth consecutive European Cup Final but for Puskás it would be his first and the moment apparently arrived again when Puskás could make his visible monuments and feats in football while ever-increasing numbers of people watched from live broadcasts and him pass into the headlines of football history as magnificent legend in a game that captivated and enjoyably moved so many supporters in the twentieth century. The far fame of this match, untrammeled by time keeps it quite alive with the universalizing power of great team artistry that exerted a spell over audiences in one emotional, overpowering evening.

The classic Real team that afternoon in Hampden Park is considered one of the greatest ever which certainly pleased the among the largest ever seen attendances in Europe as Real would play Eintracht Frankfurt in the final who were acknowledged as a real and potent side. Real players gave a powerfully convincing impression in the greatest European Cup tournament match ever played with a great many spectators keyed to the great thematic Real Madrid tenor all of it true and fresh in the minds of around 70 million that watched the live broadcast in Europe.

The ample hero of big laudable footballing romance made real in the 1959-1960 Real Madrid team again showed the old eternal elements of his near divine strength and first-class virtuosity with such the sports world is never well enough supplied and no player could make an epic out of championship matches except Puskás to dazzle again with his far-darting beams over football settings and scenes as no man in all the world could do.

By this time, Puskás was over thirty during the 1959-1960 season, was once more at the peak of his virtuous powers now aged thirty-three with that peerless left foot crackling like fireworks from a superior sort of football artisan where the climbing sap of his genius was running thick, finishing the season with 25 goals in 24 matches to lead the league as the steadiest pillar with marvelous scoring fire on a team that from February 1957 to March 1965 went undefeated at home in the insuperable world-record 121 back-to-back league matches. Puskás was again in that most brilliant hour of that wonderful second youth.

In that year's Copa del Generalísimo Puskás scores 10 goals in 5 games and in the 1959-1960 European Cup tournament Puskás scores 12 goals in 7 appearances and again became a sunshot revelation showing his true worth to dazzle with a dividend by scoring 49 goals in 38 matches to cut the vital jocund scoring sparkle that sensational year; and to record the second half of his life at Real Madrid is to record his re-acquisition of world-class status and his transformation into a public living legend.

The quintessential fact that Puskás set the thing again that is the supreme, casting the pulses of the indispensable scoring to vivify all and unclenched the gates in the European Cup tournament so that no team ever afterward could proceed to match his last team in the 20th Century. Here he amazingly scores 36 goals in 41 European Cup tournament matches and particularly in these top-echelon games Puskás had given out the most singular performances and produced so accurate a stretch of goals of serious dreaming intensity that he became the all time leader for goal-ratio past 35 scores, an achievement still unmatched in the field.

Made up of as many fiercely talented virtuosos as it was, it was never simple to win the domestic league in Spain. The Spanish top-division proved to be an unforgettable campaign and seemed to come off matched genuinely between the talents of Barcelona and Real Madrid, each team seemed to compliment the other's result everywhere they went with no clear winner right up to the finish. But what Barcelona had, however, at the time are very popular services of the famous Hungarian expatriate footballer named Lászlo Kubala, considered Barcelona's greatest ever 20th century player and two other great men of the game, Puskás' old great strike partner Sándor Kocsis and Zoltán Czibor then both also playing in Spain after their defection and turning a very good team into an engrossing side.

Alfredo Di Stéfano once commented:

"The younger generations that have never seen Puskás play don't know what they've missed. A lot of people think that he just had a good shot, but no, he could play, he was intelligent. And let us not forget that he was already thirty by the time he arrived in Spain. What a forward line we had! I don't think that there's ever been a more complete frontline in the history of the game."

Barcelona all time legend and icon and its greatest 20th Century player Lászlo Kubala in the center with Sándor Kocsis and Zoltán Czibor played the greatest football for the Catlan club in the late-1950s to early 1960s as the 4th highest top rated team of last century and the great rivals of Real Madrid.

They weren't younger then nor too older now but are ever wonderful — the usual collaboration of Puskás, Di Stéfano, Gento surely ever rising and employed ingeniously drew the invigoration of Real Madrid and shaped to make the most powerful and cumulative impact easily seen by all after Frankfurt's Kreb snatched the lead 0-1 inside eighteen minutes. Together their greatness evolves under pressure and soon the builders in the middle, Zárraga and Vidal, swelling a progress and starting a scene or two with swerves of coordinated team action condition their destinies for them to prosper.

For a confident-renewing start that extricated the audience of their daze, Di Stéfano knocked in a goal inside the left post from a cross along the turf and followed that three minutes later with a thundering roofshot goal mere feet from the goal-line after Frankfurt keeper Loy couldn't gather up the rebound. After a Real Madrid strike hit the left post, del Sol took possession in a prickly run down into the penalty area. It momentarily got away from the defender and Puskás was right on it. From a long, steep and harrowing angle outside the left side of the six-yard box Puskás perceiving his promise nails it beautifully in a rising shot, a long goal of pure release past the onrushing goalkeeper and strikes nothing but net to reap his first reward that grabs hold of the huge Scottish audience lively with cheerful voice.

The score was 3-1 just before the break and Puskás is shown superbly capable of evoking the old magic. Meanwhile, Frankfurt was on a torpid pace to catch up, their shortcomings were exposed by Real's formidable finesse and striking fidelity quite objectively, compounding their attractive football full of prevailing magnificos and omniscient living legends from the Real playmaking factory with Frankfurt bearing small resemblance side by side the challenging example of Real. Puskás then converts a penalty kick for a swollen 4-1 lead.

Puskás rockets the ball in the upper left corner of the net to make

the score 6-1.

In the 60th minute the great winger Gento was in full stride down the center-left and fast running out of room before he reaches the deadline. Gento puts up a delightful cross in front of the goalkeeper for Puskás to catch up to and Puskás with his head smashes it in, 5-1. By this time Real was playing in unreachable fortissimo where the press Puskás—Di Stéfano—Gento is whirling wide. There is scarcely a moment in the action where Frankfurt is not poised for the lesson in the continuity, the superb wholeness, and profoundly balanced brand of Real's stunning football.

Puskás found himself at the center of football history once again and it all comes back to him like a thing done before; for him it calls to mind that kind of sublime mood in Wembley in 1953 in which all is right and nothing is wrong in his best hour yet. Nobody had done it quite like Puskás had. A finer sort of memory played over his prodigal amplitude again amid great remembrances, this was the insuperable life — all withstanding dwindling before it — and as in a new legend-play Puskás once more found himself amid proud music, another triumphal tour de force historic tutti this day. This was a peerless hour, this sweet, glorious hour that effaced it all as another everlasting exalté athletic masterwork was being laudably forged and here the fresh albescent victory fills all with a galactic light.

As the scores mount for Real Madrid, the expertness with which this fantastic game is maneuvered held sway with the huge audience and moved it with tidal feelings at the finish. They compelled all to enjoy the process of being brought to such tremendously affecting work. At the violet hour in the 71st minute the rivaling Frankfurt defense is broken by the alley of magnificence of Puskás—Di Stéfano—Gento dressed in first-rate ideas that nods them home and foretold the rest as another aerial cross from Gento out wide left is headed out by a Frankfurt defender traveling to the feet of Di Stéfano who quickly drives it to Puskás who is a few yards above the penalty spot. With two defenders in front of him, Puskás' left foot blew out a long fine blast with a rising volley that wedged into the top left corner of the net and opened the scoreline 6-1 and it is the whistle of victory.

The fabulous team was impartially far and about to be throned in fantastic triumph. There is a wide, wide wonder in it all with the huge audience clad in joy before a Titan monument of unaging superstars which is an experience no one has had before or since in the European top championship-level sport. Along with the suspense of where the large assault persisting exuberantly in all directions at once could be heading there was a slow discovery to the triumphal sense that they were witnessing history in the making, climaxing a slow advance toward a brilliant epiphany in football that has moved millions of people of all ages all over the world. Even then, there was still time for Di Stéfano to score his third that re-made the score 7-3 at the finish lest the pure feeling should decline.


The sixth Real Madrid goal, Puskás' forth, hits the roof of the Eintracht Frankfurt net as the the greatest team on the planet crushes the strong German finalist 7-3 in the greatest European Cup Final ever.

All this, of course, apparently fired up the crowd so much that as the game approached its end, players on the field simply could not hear the final whistle from the referee such was the blaring and deafening 'Hampden Roar' that extended all around and drenched the air thick. Feelings of massive delight overflowed and Scottish spectators piled out onto the field amid a good-natured uproar. Scottish players whom Puskás had faced before came to congratulate him after the match. Only 'Pancho' Puskás could make it once more monumental, he carried a jubilant crowd around him thru a haze of delight.

In the grand manner again the land celebrating the grand masters and leaders of the game amid treasuries of talent as only Puskás can remember an earlier similar day like the livelong November 25 of 1953 as a historic achievement far beyond estimate. They behold Puskás, the picturesque sports hero giant who stood sole among men for greatest number national goals and the zenith goalscoring forward yielding the most national first division scores who spreads around him the wonderful knowledge that they were the very best ever of the era as Puskás touched all time greatness again with immortality.

Real Madrid 7 : 3 Eintracht Frankfurt

(Di Stéfano 20', 23', 73' | Puskás 46', 56', 60', 71')

(Puskás Scores The All-Time Tournament Title Match Record With 4 goals)

There is an atmosphere of festival, of release as merrymaking scenes of joy erupted all over Madrid. Forty thousand jubilant spectators lingered under the obvious spell of happiness with reveling and roaring extravagances for an hour on the terraces, consumingly delighted with the caliber of stupendously rich attacking football they had just witnessed. Real's interpretation of the game using the same formation once used by the Magical Magyars (3-2-5) won its way with commentators everywhere. It was like nothing that had ever come home in front of Scottish and European audiences before.

Sports commentator Richard Widdows wrote: 'The Scottish crowd knew they had seen one of the greatest ever games of club football. The only tinge of regret was that there was little hope of seeing it's like again. They noted the day, 18th of May 1960 and marked it down as others had done and counted themselves lucky to have been there.'

The Daily Mail also included: 'It's just a pity that the thousand of people at the game and who have to return to watching Scottish football must have thought that they were dreaming.'

After their landslide epic 7-3 win, Real Madrid players were celebrated throughout the land and cheer communicated itself spontaneously to the public who could barely restrain their admiration for the side that seemed capable of beating anybody in the world. They were the center of attention of the world's media for a few days afterwards. Life was picture perfect during which they were paraded through the town center and applauded when they appeared at the town hall in Glasgow. Thousands of ordinary people lined the streets and more still waved their congratulations at the airport for the flight back. Their famous win over Eintracht Frankfurt that spring in 1960 constituted a thrilling and poignant moment when everything made perfect sense.

Arguably the greatest club side in history:

1959-1960 Real Madrid after a unprecedented

five straight European Cup triumphs.

In the first-ever Intercontinental Cup, Real Madrid traveled to Uruguay to play against Peñarol in July, the team from South America recognized as that continent's champion to engross the whole footballing world under a world title. Real merely looked to safeguard their chances at the Bernabéu and left with a 0-0 score. In the return match in the late summer, in September, Real Madrid players offered their admirers the chance to witness, once more, their smash-hit side attain a stratospheric elevation in the world as the finest club side in history. Over one-hundred thousand fans showed up at the Bernabéu Stadium and Puskás appeared to have a righteous good time of it, initially being the one who orchestrated affairs in scoring two goals and making two more, one in the second minute and the eight to carve out a 5-0 lead ten minutes before the close.

The emphatic 5-1 victory in the inaugural club world title match testified to the remarkably distinguished team of which Puskás was a part and came at the precise moment when they are playing their best football. Fresh praises by the press declared them the "Best in the world". The team asparkle with world victories, Real Madrid was on top of the world after five straight European Cup trophies and appeared to wear and shine forever. People said that Real Madrid of 1960 was the greatest team of them all and speak in praise about the omnipotent players at Real Madrid. They were 'champions of the world'.

The Inaugural 1960 Intercontinental Final

Real Madrid 5 : 1 Peñarol

(Puskás 2', 8' + 2 Assists | Di Stéfano 3' | Herrera 40' | Gento 54')

1959-1960 Real Madrid had arrived to an extraordinary position in world football history as the highest scoring championship franchise in an international season. A smile levels across the face of old 'Pancho' Puskás who looks from sole to crown as imperious as ever as a magical dynamic player.

This major affirmation brings Puskás fuller being. Puskás was not a miracle, he was fulfillment at the apogee who was popular as never before. His lore at Honvéd, Hungary and Real Madrid were astonishing. Three times more the fond player would help lead Real Madrid to the European Cup title match in 1962, 1964, and 1966 and Puskás emerged as the only player who has been at the very heart of football history in the making not once not twice but three times ('The Match of the Century', the 1954 World Cup Final and the 1960 European Cup Final). For Puskás in his 22-years' pursuit of a sporting career, the goalscoring supreme of 1958-1966 Spain had finally the superb merit of being the only player who had now produced three epic tour de force matches that took place with a unique, unrepeatable all time historic foundational renown and celebrity that nothing else can give and who help facilitate the formation of the European Cup championship with Honvéd in 1954 as we shall see in the next chapter.

When the meridian is low in the first leg of the 1965-1966 European Cup on September 8th Puskás scores a goal against Feyenoord in the 1-2 away defeat. The Real Madrid team would need a superb effort to overcome the strong Dutch champions in the home game played at the Bernabéu and the old legend does something to set a crown upon his lifetime's effort with a kind of valediction and it is a privilege to see Puskás' last aspiring grandeur at the age of thirty-eight in his final major field of endeavor.

Three Iconic Immortal All-Time Master Pioneering Legends: Alfredo Di Stéfano, László Kubala (the man who made 'Camp Nou' in Barcelona famous) and Ferenc Puskás.

Puskás, the legend, the icon at the top of this game in 1971 as the head manager of the Greek Shamrocks to prove another journey's gifts: Ferenc Puskás' gleaming season in management with Panathinaikos, a magical European Cup campaign in 1970-1971 that confounded the pundits. Under Puskás' approach and guidance his Greek champion club routed Jeunesse Esch 7-1 on aggregate in the first round then proceeded to defeat Slovan Bratislava 4-2 in the second. In the quarterfinal Puskás' side outlasted English champions Everton 1-1 on the away goal. In the semifinal the very powerful Yugoslav Red Star Belgrade had his team pinned down 1-4 on goals in the first leg playing away.

In a historic match that resonated sensationally in the whole of early 1970s Greece, Puskás' side reversed fortunes with a 4-1 thrilling late revival in their home stand that many could not believe. They faced Ajax in Wembley Stadium in the European Cup Final on June 2, 1971 and gave their much-heralded Ajax opponents a classic duel till the end losing only 0-2 (one of them an own goal). Ajax began their run of winning three consecutive European Cup Finals in a row.

In his old age of 38 in the late September autumn air the game is crisp, and the match entered a complete emphatic display as Puskás, the old rocket of the team, plays one his greatest ever games and became the epitome of a durable practitioner achieved by his longevity. There he plays with wonderful vigor and runs without growing weary or faint among the equally earnest and turned on the valves to unswaddle his prize with a sense of familiarity and belonging feeling recaptured at Wembley in 1953 and Hampden Park in 1960. There the eternal player re-affirmed his Real Madrid legendary status rooted in the franchise's folklore. The European Cup return match found Puskás more truly and rewarding as ever as the match is streaked with his sunset golds by brilliantly scoring four goals in a stunning 5-0 win that set Real Madrid on the path to its sixth European Cup title in ten years, a sporting feat that took dominion everywhere and helped build for new team a new everlasting reign ending all argument. Real Madrid became the top division mountain of all time.

Still echoing with the lustrous trade when Puskás played for them so liked and popular was Puskás at Madrid that in his testimonial match that was usually accorded players of distinction at Real Madrid after their retirement from the club nearly eighty thousand people attended Puskás' own at the Bernabéu Stadium on May 26th, 1969. Huge numbers of supporters turned out for the occasion to have the biggest possible send-off when the last applauses waved to re-echoed Puskás for a saying farewell to a great football hero on a Monday evening in one great emotional night against Rapid Vienna for a much fondly remembered legend after nine years as one of the greatest-ever players to wear the all-white strip that brought him a place in the hearts of Real Madrid fans. Conversely, three days later, the event taking place at the Bernabéu had been Europe's championship Cup Final between Ajax and Milan watched by 32,000 spectators which only speaks of the joyous and warm acclaim by which Puskás was held.

Cheerfully tallying life and football and powerhouse that he was a most noble quality of magnanimity to strangers in need was there during, above and beyond his working active years in football parks where he was wholeheartedly supported all his life. After the 1956 Revolt there were pockets of Hungarian expatriates and exiles in every major city in the West. While traveling with the team and beyond, he became a veritable consulate for people of these communities ready to lend his support financial or otherwise to those who were most in need that enlarged his character. Wherever people were interested in aid and alleviation there Puskás, the lavish giver went as charming intercessor as Puskás’ story illustrates a remarkable 20th Century Horatio Alger tale of a generous to a fault player rising to the pinnacle of the game from humble origins from those youth games in the late 1930s.

Like a proud player who had helped lead the team so long Puskás would retire in 1966. For the next quarter century of his life when Puskás was no longer producing on the pitch he was now contributing his time as a coach and as an elder statesman also that made his own earlier work live for younger generations. He chose a consecutive journey-work life in management with a grand coaching tour that took him to far away clubs on five continents as a citizen of the world. The 1970-1971 year bore witness to Puskás as a marvelous leader again that earned him a reputation for fine teaching. He memorably guided a distant, unheralded and little-known Greek club, Panathinaikos, with a very nice ordering of wins obtained over big tournament stalwarts to head into the 1971 ultra-prestigious European Cup Final itself that kindled the people of Greece into raptures, this in spite of being given not much of a chance by many and with the most lukewarm of outlooks.

Still at the top of his game, 38-year-old 'Pancho' signing his autograph to Dutch player Kuiver after scoring 4 goals in an emphatic 5-0 Real Madrid rout of Dutch champions Feyenoord in the European Cup in September 1965.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter had seen Puskás play in the 1954 FIFA World Cup Final in Bern. As an eighteen-year-old Swiss journalist, Blatter was involved throughout the match as a supporting spectator of the Magyars. In homage to Puskás for what he represented on the field and for enduring personal virtues off of it, Blatter founded in 2009 an international recognition award, the FIFA Puskás Award, meant to ensure Puskás' memory would remain powerful as ever for future generations.

In a fulsome life of varied activities as a great player Puskás later became one of more noted Hungarian managers serving abroad whose journeys took him to five continents in the service of successive patrons and towards the end of his life became acclaimed consultant and ambassador to the sport until he retired to his native city of Budapest. The daily side of him was all common sense, his characteristic response and feeling to life was a oneness to dedication, resilience, a wayward spontaneity and wit that gave as good as he got. One of the most living and appealing figures in recent memory because he expressed with the greatest glow the national dreams of personal freedom in the hearts of his countrymen whom people looked to for statements on the profession and life lessons that gave this arch-player his grace who followed the promptings of his sunny-hearted compassionate sparkle to being the man that he was.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the twentieth century should rouse a Ferenc Puskás of gentlemanly virtue on and off the pitch and it was wholly appropriate, therefore, that the Nation's Stadium in Budapest finally bear his name in 2002 that does justice to a remarkable life superbly lived and acknowledged, there and elsewhere the greatest goalscorer of all time. Generations of sportsmen labor to possess such greatness of a player like Puskás, in him the start of superior journeys, populous victories, world renown, a footballing herald to give the traits of new footballing ages outlining a history yet to be, a knower of the game, traveler of actions, rapt years and absorbing eras held some so much winning leadership and scoring greatness that he is considered long to be the greatest European player of the century.

To have a famous life on the pitch and beyond as a head manager on teams charged with untellable living wisdom, in him the drift of all things golden giving all the drench of passions for audiences to experience the mystic joy on many a championship teams entirely redeemed him. But lovers of Puskás' prolific productivity have hailed him as the supreme footballer of all time and so this greatest of players, top-tier's greatest goalscorer was also the 'The Greatest Ever Player of the 20th Century.'

Glory could still re-whisper itself to the hallowed player, 'Pancho' Puskás or even make of him the greatest player who ever lived.

The day Ferenc Puskás came to play at

Liverpool, May 1967. Puskás gives a kiss on

arrival at Liverpool Airport to air hostess

Margaret Houghton. Also pictured is Billy

Liddell and Alderman Cowley (right),

the deputy Lord Mayor.

October 10, 1963, Puskás to play at Empire Wembley

Stadium in another "Match of The Century", FIFA XI 'Dream

Team' against Alf Ramsey's England team. The occasion was the 100th anniversary of the Football Association.

To celebrate, the FA organized what became known at the

time as ‘The Match of the Century’. FIFA's first ever XI included the legendary lineup of Puskás, Di Stéfano, Gento, Kopa, Eusebio, Denis Law, Djalma Santos, and Lev Yashin in goal with over 105,000

in attendance.

The icon, the man, the legend, Puskás with Hugo Sanchez in Munich in 1997 to receive the IFFHS's award for being the world's all time top goalscorer at national top-division league football.

December 17, 2024