Behind the Curtain | Eastern European draft | The winner: Skizzo
- Thread starter harms
- Start date
1990 European Cup Winners' Cup Final. Back Row L-R: Moreno Mannini, Gianluca Pagliuca, Srecko Katanec, Amadeo Carboni, Luca Pellegrini. Front Row L-R: Roberto Mancini, Pietro Vierchowod, Giovanni Invernizzi, Giuseppe Dossena, Gianluca Vialli and Fausto Pari
Sacrifice, decision, humility. Greetings Srecko Katanec
Google Translate: http://www.sampdorianews.net/i-colo...-decisione-umilta-auguri-srecko-katanec-11123
In a winning team, the balance is essential and often play the matches are decided in midfield, where the quantity and quality you must mix, creating for the defense and attack the ideal situation to achieve their potential. Sampdoria in the Scudetto complementarity between the two elements was ensured by the "mind" of Toninho Cerezo and the "arm" Srecko Katanec.
The incontrista (wiktionary: a player who is able to keep possession of the ball when challenged), born in Ljubljana on 16 July 1963 at first glance might seem puzzling: lanky, down from his six-three to seventy-nine kilograms of weight, and the (face) expression of un po'distratta (translate: a little distracted). Yet, once in the field Katanec proved a valuable pawn in a position to eradicate the ball from the opponent's turn feet, using his long flamingo levers. Cerezo did not like to run around and was a master in building the game, Katanec stood out for their commitment since heating and the field was skilled in breaking the other's action, using all their energies with a great spirit of sacrifice.
When he arrived at Sampdoria from Stuttgart in the summer of 1989 the player had Slavic behind a discreet career began in his hometown in the youth of 'NK Ljubljana and continued in' Olimpia. Moved to Dinamo Zagreb in 1985, he was able to shine two years later in the ranks of Partizan Belgrade, with which he won the Yugoslav championship. In the national team since 1983, he participates in the European Championship the following year, at the Olympics in Los Angeles (where Yugoslavia won the bronze) and the World Cup 1990.
The Sampdoria debut took place August 27, 1989 during Lazio-Sampdoria (0-2). It will be the first of 87 games with the coat doriana in the succession of six seasons crowned by unforgettable successes in the league and in European competition. Katanec will mark a total of 12 goals, including the decisive one against Brann Bergen in sixteenths of Cup Winners Cup '89 -'90, the goal of 1-0 against the external 'Olympiakos in the same competition the following year and the first network against Red Star in the round of Champions League.
Since 1996 he takes successfully coaching career, which features the historic breakthrough achieved by the Slovenian football, thanks to his work as head of the National, ferried in three years at 27th place in the FIFA rankings. With a recipe that uses your own player past, expertly combines the Slavic tradition, the German strength and the Italian defensive organization, allowing Slovenia to qualify for Euro 2000 and the World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
After a spell on the bench Olympiakos, Katanec returns to lead a national, Macedonian, and since 2009 has grader UAE.
The experience at Sampdoria has left its mark, Katanec fact does not fail to affirm the importance of the group, because the Sampdoria team would not get those historical achievements when many samples had not been rehearsed and united on and off the field.
Katanec for the human and professional happiness has followed a path of commitment, dedication and perseverance. Because the imagination in the field has a chance to emerge thanks to those who sacrifice themselves for the team and puts their competitive spirit.
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@harms
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Just like Arsenal vs. Bayern in CL #notagainPut your dates in the list below:
- Mazhar/OneNil vs.
- 23.01 Monday
- Sjor vs Moby - 24.01 Tuesday
- Isotope vs Pat Mustard - 24.01 Tuesday
- Enigma_87 vs prath92 - 25.01 Wednesday
- Skizzo vs Tuppet - 23.01 Monday
Sunday or Friday. Other days I won't be able to participate in the thread as much.
Monday would also work but there's already two games on that day.
I think it'll be even closer than last time, to be fair. It should be a great match, and I look forward to it.
What are your thoughts on Moravcik Gio, and his relative standing as an AM in this pool? I was so certain I'd pick him that I was watching some Czechoslovakia matches from WC '90 and making notes for potential GIFs, but in the end I couldn't resist Mijatovic and eventually Buryak too. Brilliant player IMO, and I discovered that Marseille tried to sign him in 1992 as replacement/cover for the injury ravaged Stojkovic.
- Mazhar/OneNil vs. - 23.01 Monday
- Sjor vs Moby - 24.01 Tuesday
- Isotope vs Pat Mustard - 24.01 Tuesday
- Enigma_87 vs prath92 - 25.01 Wednesday
- Skizzo vs Tuppet - 23.01 Monday
- DC/Anders vs Jayvin - 27.01 Friday
Friday. Good luck
Great, same to you.
- Raees v Redtiger/2mufc - 22.01 Sunday
- Masher/OneNil vs. - 23.01 Monday
- Sjor vs Moby - 24.01 Tuesday
- Isotope vs Pat Mustard - 24.01 Tuesday
- Enigma_87 vs prath92 - 25.01 Wednesday
- Skizzo vs Tuppet - 23.01 Monday
- DC/Anders vs Jayvin - 27.01 Friday
Alexandr Mostovoi - Legendary #10 of Celta and a true artist on the pitch
The 90's produced some of the most glorious moments in football that you can't really forget, and most of them performed in La liga at the time were due a true artist, who was one of the most talented players ever to have played in the so-called modern football: the one and only Aleksandr Mostovoi.
El Zar, as he was kindly nicknamed in Vigo, arrived in Portugal in 1992 to play for the Lisbon giants of SL Benfica, virtually following his former Spartak mates Vasily Kulkov and Sergei Yuran. After a fantastic spell at Spartak Moscow, where he received previous lessons from true football masters, such as Konstantin Beskov and Oleg Romantsev, Mostovoi failed to leave his mark at SL Benfica and it didn’t come as a surprise when he left the team in the following year to join the French side of SM Caen and later, Strasbourg. Despite having made a fairly good name for himself in French football, the irreverent highly skilled midfielder that used to create Maradona-like long runs, leaving all the opponents behind and sometimes even dribbling past a hopeless and abandoned goalkeeper as well, was nowhere to be seen. However, things started to slowly change when he signed for Celta de Vigo in 1996, although not immediately.
Spanish football had already been home to a considerable amount of Russian footballers, from Onopko to Karpin, going through Korneev to Radchenko, all of them fantastic players, but none of them impressed as much as Mostovoi did. Back in those days, Celta de Vigo were a team constantly struggling to avoid relegation. And it is fair to say that El Zar helped to change that paradigm. Just one year after his arrival, since his first season with the Galician team was probably one of the worst of his entire career (with the El Molinon incident and some other minor unpleasant episodes), Celta finished La Liga in the sixth position, their best record in 27 years, and, in the following years, Los Celestes managed to make a stand both domestically and internationally with memorable wins over some of the Old Continent football giants such as Barcelona, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Juventus, only to name a few.
Mostovoi had a paramount role in those glory days. Celta’s historic number 10 (he also wore both number 20 and 24) was the team leader and although he was often accused of being highly temperamental and having a strong personality, the truth is that he changed the reality of that team forever. His boots exhaled magic, impossible passes and unthinkable goals. His intelligence on the pitch allowed him to read the game seconds before his opponents and he didn’t need to run a lot in order to dribble and to place the ball wherever he wanted. He was truly a football wizard and, together with Valery Karpin, he helped to implement the so-called “tiki-taka” at Celta back in those days. Mostovoi has confessed that he and Karpin could have almost played with their eyes closed, something they had learned at Spartak, and that they knew exactly where the other one would be before passing the ball, without even having to look.
During the 1997-98 season, Celta trashed Louis Van Gaal’s powerful Barça (who later considered Mostovoi to be the best footballer in La Liga that season) by 3-1 at Los Balaídos in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Mostovoi scored a fantastic goal from a solo effort that left the Dutch manager sitting quietly in the dugout wondering how someone could possibly rip apart the Catalan defence line as the Russian playmaker did. El Zar applied the same recipe to several other teams including Real Madrid and Los Blancos supporters’ certainly remember that time when their team was hammered at Los Balaídos by 5-1 with three goals from Lubo Penev and a remarkable performance from Mostovoi.
Led by their Russian wizard, Celta looked unbeatable throughout the season, the diligence of Eduardo Berizzo and Makélélé proving the perfect platform for Mostovoi and his team of artists further up the pitch. Celta finished fifth, narrowly missing out on the Champions League places, with a memorable away victory against Liverpool being the highlight of a UEFA Cup run that saw Marseille ruin Mostovoi’s European hopes yet again. It would be in the league, however, where Celta proved their most potent. After beating Real Madrid at the Bernabéu early in the season, they faced Los Merengues in the return fixture on 11 April 1999.
It is very difficult to describe someone like Aleksandr in words, no matter how fancy those words may be. He was a unique footballer, an idol of a generation of supporters and footballers alike, a player that was good enough to play in any top team in the world. But for some reason, “football has been unfair to Mostovoi,” as Victor Fernández, one of his former managers at Celta de Vigo, put it during promotion of the book Diez Años Sin El 10, Mostovoi’s authorized biography.
Twelve years on from his retirement, time has done little to dim the joyous memories that Mostovoi brought to Celta and to Vigo. Fans can still be seen wearing Mostovoi shirts in the stands of the Balaidos, singing songs about the ‘Tsar of the Balaídos’ who put them on the map. Two local journalists even released a book in his honour, Ten Years Without the Ten, which Rafa Valero and Víctor López wrote to celebrate the unquantifiable impact the Russian had on the city and it’s fans.
Mostovoi’s career may not have hit the heights that he or the football world expected, but his talent and his impact is beyond question, particularly in one small corner in the north-west of Spain. In Galicia, Aleksandr Mostovoi will always be number 10 on the field, and number one in their hearts.
@harms
The 90's produced some of the most glorious moments in football that you can't really forget, and most of them performed in La liga at the time were due a true artist, who was one of the most talented players ever to have played in the so-called modern football: the one and only Aleksandr Mostovoi.
El Zar, as he was kindly nicknamed in Vigo, arrived in Portugal in 1992 to play for the Lisbon giants of SL Benfica, virtually following his former Spartak mates Vasily Kulkov and Sergei Yuran. After a fantastic spell at Spartak Moscow, where he received previous lessons from true football masters, such as Konstantin Beskov and Oleg Romantsev, Mostovoi failed to leave his mark at SL Benfica and it didn’t come as a surprise when he left the team in the following year to join the French side of SM Caen and later, Strasbourg. Despite having made a fairly good name for himself in French football, the irreverent highly skilled midfielder that used to create Maradona-like long runs, leaving all the opponents behind and sometimes even dribbling past a hopeless and abandoned goalkeeper as well, was nowhere to be seen. However, things started to slowly change when he signed for Celta de Vigo in 1996, although not immediately.
Spanish football had already been home to a considerable amount of Russian footballers, from Onopko to Karpin, going through Korneev to Radchenko, all of them fantastic players, but none of them impressed as much as Mostovoi did. Back in those days, Celta de Vigo were a team constantly struggling to avoid relegation. And it is fair to say that El Zar helped to change that paradigm. Just one year after his arrival, since his first season with the Galician team was probably one of the worst of his entire career (with the El Molinon incident and some other minor unpleasant episodes), Celta finished La Liga in the sixth position, their best record in 27 years, and, in the following years, Los Celestes managed to make a stand both domestically and internationally with memorable wins over some of the Old Continent football giants such as Barcelona, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Juventus, only to name a few.
Mostovoi had a paramount role in those glory days. Celta’s historic number 10 (he also wore both number 20 and 24) was the team leader and although he was often accused of being highly temperamental and having a strong personality, the truth is that he changed the reality of that team forever. His boots exhaled magic, impossible passes and unthinkable goals. His intelligence on the pitch allowed him to read the game seconds before his opponents and he didn’t need to run a lot in order to dribble and to place the ball wherever he wanted. He was truly a football wizard and, together with Valery Karpin, he helped to implement the so-called “tiki-taka” at Celta back in those days. Mostovoi has confessed that he and Karpin could have almost played with their eyes closed, something they had learned at Spartak, and that they knew exactly where the other one would be before passing the ball, without even having to look.
During the 1997-98 season, Celta trashed Louis Van Gaal’s powerful Barça (who later considered Mostovoi to be the best footballer in La Liga that season) by 3-1 at Los Balaídos in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Mostovoi scored a fantastic goal from a solo effort that left the Dutch manager sitting quietly in the dugout wondering how someone could possibly rip apart the Catalan defence line as the Russian playmaker did. El Zar applied the same recipe to several other teams including Real Madrid and Los Blancos supporters’ certainly remember that time when their team was hammered at Los Balaídos by 5-1 with three goals from Lubo Penev and a remarkable performance from Mostovoi.
Led by their Russian wizard, Celta looked unbeatable throughout the season, the diligence of Eduardo Berizzo and Makélélé proving the perfect platform for Mostovoi and his team of artists further up the pitch. Celta finished fifth, narrowly missing out on the Champions League places, with a memorable away victory against Liverpool being the highlight of a UEFA Cup run that saw Marseille ruin Mostovoi’s European hopes yet again. It would be in the league, however, where Celta proved their most potent. After beating Real Madrid at the Bernabéu early in the season, they faced Los Merengues in the return fixture on 11 April 1999.
It is very difficult to describe someone like Aleksandr in words, no matter how fancy those words may be. He was a unique footballer, an idol of a generation of supporters and footballers alike, a player that was good enough to play in any top team in the world. But for some reason, “football has been unfair to Mostovoi,” as Victor Fernández, one of his former managers at Celta de Vigo, put it during promotion of the book Diez Años Sin El 10, Mostovoi’s authorized biography.
Twelve years on from his retirement, time has done little to dim the joyous memories that Mostovoi brought to Celta and to Vigo. Fans can still be seen wearing Mostovoi shirts in the stands of the Balaidos, singing songs about the ‘Tsar of the Balaídos’ who put them on the map. Two local journalists even released a book in his honour, Ten Years Without the Ten, which Rafa Valero and Víctor López wrote to celebrate the unquantifiable impact the Russian had on the city and it’s fans.
Mostovoi’s career may not have hit the heights that he or the football world expected, but his talent and his impact is beyond question, particularly in one small corner in the north-west of Spain. In Galicia, Aleksandr Mostovoi will always be number 10 on the field, and number one in their hearts.
@harms
Miodrag Belodedici - The Stag - the great libero who conquered Europe twice
Only 25 men have ever played in and won a European Cup final for an eastern European team. Miodrag Belodedici is two of them. The Romanian libero, known as the Deer because of the elegance of his play, became the first player to win the trophy with two different clubs, which would make his story significant enough; what makes it remarkable is that between his two finals he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for treason.
The Story of Belodedici is replete with symbolism. A modest man, who merited to become a true a star, but always avoided that image, was defined by that very symbol – the star. First, the Star from Bucharest. Then, the Red Star from Belgrade. And yet another one star, the communist one. Each of them made an indelible mark on the life of this man, who himself made history in European football.
An ethnic Serb, Belodedici (Belodedić in Serbian: in both cases pronounced ‘Belodedich’) was born in the Romanian village of Sokol, in the historical region of Banat. Banat itself is an epitome of the unavoidable coexistence of peoples in the Balkans – a region straddling the border between Serbia and Romania, with a collage of peoples, including many Serbs living on the Romanian side of the border and even more ethnic Romanians living in Serbia.
At the age of 17, he was scooped by Luceafarul Bucharest, a Romanian Communist equivalent of La Masia or Ajax’s famous youth academy. But that was only an interim phase, prepping him for much bigger things to come. Steaua Bucharest, the Romanian powerhouse, was building a fearsome squad, and Belodedici soon became an important piece of that amazing mosaic. In 1986, the anonymous boys from Steaua bowled over the entire European football world. They pushed to the final of the European Champions Clubs’ Cup, where they faced Barcelona. The game was tough. Both sides dug in and it ended scoreless after 120 minutes of play. Mile was instrumental in defending, with exemplary calmness and fortitude. Then came the penalties. The hero of the game was Helmut Duckadam, who saved all four of Barcelona’s penalties, making Steaua the first Eastern European team to ascend to the pinnacle of the European club football.
Next stop was Belgrade. Once there, he wanted to play football again. Even though a relative suggested they could pay a visit to Partizan FC, Belodedici had long ago made his mind: the only option was his childhood sweetheart, the Red Star. That’s how he got to Mr Dzajic. The poor man was in utter shock: Belodedici had to repeat six times who he is and why he is there. But in the end, one man’s loss was another man’s gain: the strictness of Romanian Communism pushed one of the best defenders at the time to Yugoslavia – still a Socialist country, but a Disneyland compared to Ceausescu’s fief.
Back home Romania, Mile was denounced as a traitor. The legend has it that even judicial proceedings were brought against him in Romania, resulting in a ten-year prison sentence should he ever return home. But in several interviews for various Serbian outlets, Belodedici himself denied it. He was a persona non grata, but not a convict. But he did earn a 12-month suspension from UEFA. All of that meant that the first months of his Belgrade sojourn were spent incognito. He played football for Red Star’s reserve team, but could only appear on a pitch under an alias. However, it was a ‘worthwhile investment’. In a matter of years, Red Star developed into a team that would eventually subjugate Europe and the world. It was a squad that commanded respect, and although, as usual, the main spotlight was on the offensive half, featuring Pancev, Prosinecki, Savicevic, Jugovic, Mihajlovic, the back was just as impressive. Mile was paired with Ilija Najdoski, and the two formed a formidable defensive wall.
Similar but different, they seamlessly complemented one another. Najdoski, the gladiator, was a demonstration of brute force, with an impeccable command of the airspace. Belodedici, the gentleman, with superior technique and overview, pulled the strings between defence and offence. It was that very graciousness in play which, early on in his career, earned him the nickname ‘the stag‘.
The project peaked in the 1990/1991 season, with what could be described as a deja-vu for Miodrag. Another triumphant campaign for an Eastern European team. Another nail-biting final. Another penalty shoot-out. Only this time, Mile was one of the scorers. Another title. The only difference was the International Cup. While Steaua lost to River Plate in Tokyo final, Red Star licked the Chilean outfit Colo Colo 3:0.
Following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the ignominious end of the Ceausescu regime in Romania, Belodedici was ‘rehabilitated’, making it possible for him to return to his national team. Having missed one world cup for political reasons (1990 in Italy), Mile re-entered the Romanian national team at the best possible moment: the golden generation had come of age and was readying up to make its mark at the USA ’94 World Cup.
Belodedici joined the likes of Popescu, Munteanu, Lobont, Petrescu and the unforgettable Gheorge Hagi, one of the last remaining true no. 10s in world football.Romania pulled up a dazzling performance, topping its group and eliminating the mighty Argentinians in the second round. Everything was a fairy tale until the quarter finals, where Romania faced Sweden, another Nordic upstart, emulating Denmark’s European Championship success two years prior. Once again, the game went into overtime. Again, there was a penalty shoot-out. But this time, Belodedici, the last shooter in the line, missed. Actually, the shot was saved by Thomas Ravelli.
Which leaves just one issue. If the Steaua of 86 played the Red Star of 91, who would win? "Which team am I playing on?" asks Belodedici.
Belodedici – the libero
One of the classiest defenders you’ll see was Miodrag Belodedici. The Romanian won the European Cup with Steaua a few years earlier and was given the key role in Red Star’s defence. Belodedici played as the libero, sweeping up behind the other defenders, controlled the defence after his will and regularly stepped up with the ball to initiate attacks.
The above picture is from the second-leg with the other three defenders circled in yellow. Belodedici is just out of shot.
Now, Belodedici is visible, organizing his fellow defenders. We can clearly see the man-marking from Jugovic, Radinovic and Marovic with the Romanian sweeping behind them.
Here is an interesting shot of the back-four. Belodedici as the libero again, with the other three making up almost a diamond defence in this instance. It could regularly look like this too, with Mihajlovic, defending far more on the left than Binic on the right, filling in as a left-back.
Belodedici earned the nickname “The Deer” because of his elegant style of play, and would regularly glide through the defensive line with the ball at his feet ready to set up attacks.
With the ball it usually looked a normal back-four, with Jugovic trying to get on the ball in midfield. However, as seen below, it had a different look when Belodedici stepped out.
He was both the man cleaning up defensively and organizing the team, as well as the deep-lying playmaker, who exchanged duties with Jugovic to get the mercurial talents of Prosinecki and Savicevic on the ball as much as possible.
All in all Belodedici had a glorious career - 2 European cups with Eastern European sides, 1 Intercontinental cup, 1 UEFA Super Cup, 6 Romanian league titles with 5 domestic cups, 3 Yugoslav league titles with 1 domestic cup. He conquered wherever he went and his pinnacle in his rather unfortunate international career, blemished by regime and the inability to feature with some great Romanian talent was the 94 WC - reaching the QF's a feat that is still unbeaten to this date - topping their group and eliminating Maradona led Argentina.
Mile is now in his fifties. He is still very much the same man he used to be. But age has treated him well. Apart from a grey lock or two, he still has the same youthful smile and a flash in his eyes. Reminiscing about his past, he always says he has no regrets. And he shouldn’t. It was a great run, and he definitely deserved every bit of it.
Only 25 men have ever played in and won a European Cup final for an eastern European team. Miodrag Belodedici is two of them. The Romanian libero, known as the Deer because of the elegance of his play, became the first player to win the trophy with two different clubs, which would make his story significant enough; what makes it remarkable is that between his two finals he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for treason.
The Story of Belodedici is replete with symbolism. A modest man, who merited to become a true a star, but always avoided that image, was defined by that very symbol – the star. First, the Star from Bucharest. Then, the Red Star from Belgrade. And yet another one star, the communist one. Each of them made an indelible mark on the life of this man, who himself made history in European football.
An ethnic Serb, Belodedici (Belodedić in Serbian: in both cases pronounced ‘Belodedich’) was born in the Romanian village of Sokol, in the historical region of Banat. Banat itself is an epitome of the unavoidable coexistence of peoples in the Balkans – a region straddling the border between Serbia and Romania, with a collage of peoples, including many Serbs living on the Romanian side of the border and even more ethnic Romanians living in Serbia.
At the age of 17, he was scooped by Luceafarul Bucharest, a Romanian Communist equivalent of La Masia or Ajax’s famous youth academy. But that was only an interim phase, prepping him for much bigger things to come. Steaua Bucharest, the Romanian powerhouse, was building a fearsome squad, and Belodedici soon became an important piece of that amazing mosaic. In 1986, the anonymous boys from Steaua bowled over the entire European football world. They pushed to the final of the European Champions Clubs’ Cup, where they faced Barcelona. The game was tough. Both sides dug in and it ended scoreless after 120 minutes of play. Mile was instrumental in defending, with exemplary calmness and fortitude. Then came the penalties. The hero of the game was Helmut Duckadam, who saved all four of Barcelona’s penalties, making Steaua the first Eastern European team to ascend to the pinnacle of the European club football.
Next stop was Belgrade. Once there, he wanted to play football again. Even though a relative suggested they could pay a visit to Partizan FC, Belodedici had long ago made his mind: the only option was his childhood sweetheart, the Red Star. That’s how he got to Mr Dzajic. The poor man was in utter shock: Belodedici had to repeat six times who he is and why he is there. But in the end, one man’s loss was another man’s gain: the strictness of Romanian Communism pushed one of the best defenders at the time to Yugoslavia – still a Socialist country, but a Disneyland compared to Ceausescu’s fief.
Back home Romania, Mile was denounced as a traitor. The legend has it that even judicial proceedings were brought against him in Romania, resulting in a ten-year prison sentence should he ever return home. But in several interviews for various Serbian outlets, Belodedici himself denied it. He was a persona non grata, but not a convict. But he did earn a 12-month suspension from UEFA. All of that meant that the first months of his Belgrade sojourn were spent incognito. He played football for Red Star’s reserve team, but could only appear on a pitch under an alias. However, it was a ‘worthwhile investment’. In a matter of years, Red Star developed into a team that would eventually subjugate Europe and the world. It was a squad that commanded respect, and although, as usual, the main spotlight was on the offensive half, featuring Pancev, Prosinecki, Savicevic, Jugovic, Mihajlovic, the back was just as impressive. Mile was paired with Ilija Najdoski, and the two formed a formidable defensive wall.
Similar but different, they seamlessly complemented one another. Najdoski, the gladiator, was a demonstration of brute force, with an impeccable command of the airspace. Belodedici, the gentleman, with superior technique and overview, pulled the strings between defence and offence. It was that very graciousness in play which, early on in his career, earned him the nickname ‘the stag‘.
The project peaked in the 1990/1991 season, with what could be described as a deja-vu for Miodrag. Another triumphant campaign for an Eastern European team. Another nail-biting final. Another penalty shoot-out. Only this time, Mile was one of the scorers. Another title. The only difference was the International Cup. While Steaua lost to River Plate in Tokyo final, Red Star licked the Chilean outfit Colo Colo 3:0.
Following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the ignominious end of the Ceausescu regime in Romania, Belodedici was ‘rehabilitated’, making it possible for him to return to his national team. Having missed one world cup for political reasons (1990 in Italy), Mile re-entered the Romanian national team at the best possible moment: the golden generation had come of age and was readying up to make its mark at the USA ’94 World Cup.
Belodedici joined the likes of Popescu, Munteanu, Lobont, Petrescu and the unforgettable Gheorge Hagi, one of the last remaining true no. 10s in world football.Romania pulled up a dazzling performance, topping its group and eliminating the mighty Argentinians in the second round. Everything was a fairy tale until the quarter finals, where Romania faced Sweden, another Nordic upstart, emulating Denmark’s European Championship success two years prior. Once again, the game went into overtime. Again, there was a penalty shoot-out. But this time, Belodedici, the last shooter in the line, missed. Actually, the shot was saved by Thomas Ravelli.
Which leaves just one issue. If the Steaua of 86 played the Red Star of 91, who would win? "Which team am I playing on?" asks Belodedici.
Belodedici – the libero
One of the classiest defenders you’ll see was Miodrag Belodedici. The Romanian won the European Cup with Steaua a few years earlier and was given the key role in Red Star’s defence. Belodedici played as the libero, sweeping up behind the other defenders, controlled the defence after his will and regularly stepped up with the ball to initiate attacks.
The above picture is from the second-leg with the other three defenders circled in yellow. Belodedici is just out of shot.
Now, Belodedici is visible, organizing his fellow defenders. We can clearly see the man-marking from Jugovic, Radinovic and Marovic with the Romanian sweeping behind them.
Here is an interesting shot of the back-four. Belodedici as the libero again, with the other three making up almost a diamond defence in this instance. It could regularly look like this too, with Mihajlovic, defending far more on the left than Binic on the right, filling in as a left-back.
Belodedici earned the nickname “The Deer” because of his elegant style of play, and would regularly glide through the defensive line with the ball at his feet ready to set up attacks.
With the ball it usually looked a normal back-four, with Jugovic trying to get on the ball in midfield. However, as seen below, it had a different look when Belodedici stepped out.
He was both the man cleaning up defensively and organizing the team, as well as the deep-lying playmaker, who exchanged duties with Jugovic to get the mercurial talents of Prosinecki and Savicevic on the ball as much as possible.
All in all Belodedici had a glorious career - 2 European cups with Eastern European sides, 1 Intercontinental cup, 1 UEFA Super Cup, 6 Romanian league titles with 5 domestic cups, 3 Yugoslav league titles with 1 domestic cup. He conquered wherever he went and his pinnacle in his rather unfortunate international career, blemished by regime and the inability to feature with some great Romanian talent was the 94 WC - reaching the QF's a feat that is still unbeaten to this date - topping their group and eliminating Maradona led Argentina.
Mile is now in his fifties. He is still very much the same man he used to be. But age has treated him well. Apart from a grey lock or two, he still has the same youthful smile and a flash in his eyes. Reminiscing about his past, he always says he has no regrets. And he shouldn’t. It was a great run, and he definitely deserved every bit of it.
@Enigma_87 Impressive work
lovely staff enigma
Thanks, guys. Some favorites players in it worth the effort.
David Kipiani - Georgian Legend
David Kipiani (Georgian: დავით ყიფიანი; November 18, 1951 in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR - September 17, 2001 in Tbilisi, Georgia) was a famous Georgian football midfielder and manager. He played for FC Dinamo Tbilisi and Soviet Union National Team and also for a year for Lokomotiv Tbilsi.
Many think, David Kipiani was the best Georgian midfielder and one of the best Georgian coaches. Among his titles as a player are Soviet League championship (1978), Soviet Cup (1976 and 1979) and UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (1981) all with FC Dinamo Tbilisi. David Kipiani was named Soviet Footballer of the Year in 1977. As a coach, he led FC Dinamo Tbilisi to 6 Georgian titles and FC Torpedo Kutaisi to 2.
In spite of the fact that he was one of the best Soviet players, he was not given to him a chance to play World Cup finals. Many think his peak was in 1982, but Soviet National Team bosses refused to take him to Spain. Reasons are still unclear.
The Georgian Cup and the stadium in the town of Gurjaani were named after him. He died from injuries sustained in a car crash on September 17, 2001. He was 50 years old.
Below an extract of an article of the New York Times - not really a Soviet newspapers.
Below an extract of an article by the Guardian
Kipiani vs Fachetti Inter Milan 0-1 Tbilissi
Kipiani vs Liverpool - Hansen - the assist
Kipiani vs Hambourg
Passing skills VS Japan
David Kipiani (Georgian: დავით ყიფიანი; November 18, 1951 in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR - September 17, 2001 in Tbilisi, Georgia) was a famous Georgian football midfielder and manager. He played for FC Dinamo Tbilisi and Soviet Union National Team and also for a year for Lokomotiv Tbilsi.
Many think, David Kipiani was the best Georgian midfielder and one of the best Georgian coaches. Among his titles as a player are Soviet League championship (1978), Soviet Cup (1976 and 1979) and UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (1981) all with FC Dinamo Tbilisi. David Kipiani was named Soviet Footballer of the Year in 1977. As a coach, he led FC Dinamo Tbilisi to 6 Georgian titles and FC Torpedo Kutaisi to 2.
In spite of the fact that he was one of the best Soviet players, he was not given to him a chance to play World Cup finals. Many think his peak was in 1982, but Soviet National Team bosses refused to take him to Spain. Reasons are still unclear.
The Georgian Cup and the stadium in the town of Gurjaani were named after him. He died from injuries sustained in a car crash on September 17, 2001. He was 50 years old.
Below an extract of an article of the New York Times - not really a Soviet newspapers.
Georgian Legend Kipiani Dies in Car Crash; Striker Herrlich Returns After Brain Surgery : As One Star Is Lost, Another Finds Hope
By ROB HUGHES and INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNESEPT. 19, 2001
LONDON— After the most numbing seven days many of us have known, what personal compassion is there left for a single tragic death of a sportsman, or for that matter what joy might we share with a player returning to action after brain surgery?
As the European soccer games pick up the threads, we have both those extremes. The death of David Kipiani in a car crash in Georgia on Monday took from us a man who was the equivalent in his day of an East European Zinedine Zidane.
The return to competitive activity of Heiko Herrlich on Saturday, albeit for just 13 minutes at the end of the Ruhr Valley derby match in Germany, was a triumph beyond expectation after he was found to have a tumor in the central section of the brain 310 days ago.
The loss of a man such as Kipiani, the salvaging of a career such as Herrlich's, remind us that sport does matter because it is the game of life. David Kipiani played it, and lived it, to extraordinary dimensions.
He was tall, his body was angular, his head prematurely bald, and he wore a black brush mustache. But he could play with artistry few men could summon. He orchestrated a powerful Dinamo Tbilisi team and, when politics allowed it, he put his personal brand of humanity into the Soviet Union team that, in the 1970s, built its most engaging performances around the elegance of Georgians and the athleticism of Ukrainians.
It was a pleasure to watch Kipiani, and to meet him in his homeland. I watched him languidly toy with the best of British teams of that era — with Liverpool and West Ham United in European club competition, with Wales in World Cup qualification.
In Tbilisi, before his beloved Georgia in the south won independence in 1991, some of us visiting journalists slept with the biggest cockroaches of our life, and made the most gauche error of referring to Kipiani and his countrymen as Soviets.
At the same time abrupt, yet through his dark, compelling eyes turning an insult to laughter, Kipiani responded that you never call him, or the darting little forward Ramas Shengelia, the dynamic midfielder Vitaly Daraselia, or the smooth defensive libero Alexandr Chivadze, anything but Georgians. Their club, Dinamo Tbilisi, represented the secret police, but they were free agents. Their Latin touch was superior to the rigidity of Russian systems.
Kipiani embodied the Georgian style. I still can see his 60-yard pass in London dropping for Shengelia with such perfect precision and weight that the forward did not need to break stride to collect it.
When Kipiani's zenith was ended, with cruel irony when a tackle broke his thigh bone in an exhibition tournament in Santiago Bernabeu, the stadium of Real Madrid in 1981, he was without doubt among the most influential soccer players on earth.
Had he been born in the West, he would have been a millionaire. Had he indeed been a Russian, he would have defected to the lure of offers that came his way. But he was Georgian to the core, and he understood that the style he could command, the freedom his play suggested, meant so much to countless Georgians who identified with him.
He suspected that it was this, rather than his broken leg, that ultimately ended his international career. When he started playing again, Konstantin Beskov, the trainer of the U.S.S.R. team, used the injury as an excuse to snub Kipiani. The proud player at once stopped playing altogether, but came back several times to manage the Georgian national team. He was in that role until a few months ago when defeats forced him out.
David Kipiani was 50 when his life ended abruptly on a road near Tserovani, 18 miles (30 kilometers) west of the Georgian capital. He enjoyed exactly twice the life span of Daraselia, his midfield partner, who also died in a car crash on a Georgian road.
By ROB HUGHES and INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNESEPT. 19, 2001
LONDON— After the most numbing seven days many of us have known, what personal compassion is there left for a single tragic death of a sportsman, or for that matter what joy might we share with a player returning to action after brain surgery?
As the European soccer games pick up the threads, we have both those extremes. The death of David Kipiani in a car crash in Georgia on Monday took from us a man who was the equivalent in his day of an East European Zinedine Zidane.
The return to competitive activity of Heiko Herrlich on Saturday, albeit for just 13 minutes at the end of the Ruhr Valley derby match in Germany, was a triumph beyond expectation after he was found to have a tumor in the central section of the brain 310 days ago.
The loss of a man such as Kipiani, the salvaging of a career such as Herrlich's, remind us that sport does matter because it is the game of life. David Kipiani played it, and lived it, to extraordinary dimensions.
He was tall, his body was angular, his head prematurely bald, and he wore a black brush mustache. But he could play with artistry few men could summon. He orchestrated a powerful Dinamo Tbilisi team and, when politics allowed it, he put his personal brand of humanity into the Soviet Union team that, in the 1970s, built its most engaging performances around the elegance of Georgians and the athleticism of Ukrainians.
It was a pleasure to watch Kipiani, and to meet him in his homeland. I watched him languidly toy with the best of British teams of that era — with Liverpool and West Ham United in European club competition, with Wales in World Cup qualification.
In Tbilisi, before his beloved Georgia in the south won independence in 1991, some of us visiting journalists slept with the biggest cockroaches of our life, and made the most gauche error of referring to Kipiani and his countrymen as Soviets.
At the same time abrupt, yet through his dark, compelling eyes turning an insult to laughter, Kipiani responded that you never call him, or the darting little forward Ramas Shengelia, the dynamic midfielder Vitaly Daraselia, or the smooth defensive libero Alexandr Chivadze, anything but Georgians. Their club, Dinamo Tbilisi, represented the secret police, but they were free agents. Their Latin touch was superior to the rigidity of Russian systems.
Kipiani embodied the Georgian style. I still can see his 60-yard pass in London dropping for Shengelia with such perfect precision and weight that the forward did not need to break stride to collect it.
When Kipiani's zenith was ended, with cruel irony when a tackle broke his thigh bone in an exhibition tournament in Santiago Bernabeu, the stadium of Real Madrid in 1981, he was without doubt among the most influential soccer players on earth.
Had he been born in the West, he would have been a millionaire. Had he indeed been a Russian, he would have defected to the lure of offers that came his way. But he was Georgian to the core, and he understood that the style he could command, the freedom his play suggested, meant so much to countless Georgians who identified with him.
He suspected that it was this, rather than his broken leg, that ultimately ended his international career. When he started playing again, Konstantin Beskov, the trainer of the U.S.S.R. team, used the injury as an excuse to snub Kipiani. The proud player at once stopped playing altogether, but came back several times to manage the Georgian national team. He was in that role until a few months ago when defeats forced him out.
David Kipiani was 50 when his life ended abruptly on a road near Tserovani, 18 miles (30 kilometers) west of the Georgian capital. He enjoyed exactly twice the life span of Daraselia, his midfield partner, who also died in a car crash on a Georgian road.
Below an extract of an article by the Guardian
By schooling Liverpool and West Ham in the art of fast, passing, composed football, the Dinamo Tbilisi side of the 1970s and 1980s captured the hearts of young British fans who were unaccustomed to watching such expressive play
By Craig McCracken for Beyond The Last Man, of the Guardian Sport Network
The Dinamo Tbilisi team celebrate with the European Cup Winner trophy. Photograph: Action Images
Craig McCracken
Monday 7 September 2015 13.40 BST Last modified on Monday 4 April 2016 13.18 BST
In the decades before blanket television coverage of European football became the norm, little was known about clubs from the furthest of far-flung continental outposts. Exposure was fleeting, usually coming in the form of snatched, crackly highlight packages on Sportsweek, which were squeezed in after the boxing, darts and curling. So, when the provincial Georgians of Dinamo Tbilisi were broadcast into British homes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, their extraordinary quality came as a mysterious and exotic bolt from the blue.
My mind was a blur of questions: who are these footballing supermen and in what sinister Soviet sports laboratory have they been manufactured? Why don’t they smile more when they’re really, really good at football? And can communism be a bad thing if it produces athletes like this?
A startled British public was introduced to this Tbilisi side when they played Liverpool in the first round of the European Cup in 1979-80. Drawing the recent two-time winners and favourites offered the most daunting of debuts in Europe’s premier club competition, but at no stage of either leg did the Georgian club look remotely cowed by their heavyweight opponents. Only finishing that fell short of their elevated levels of technical play allowed Liverpool to edge the Anfield leg 2-1. Tbilisi’s promise in the first leg was fully realised in the return as they eased to a 3-0 victory in a packed Boris Paichadze National Stadium.
Their performance that afternoon was resoundingly accomplished. Tbilisi’s approach harmoniously blended the best of two seemingly conflicting playing styles: the hard-running, quick-passing game typical of Russian and Ukrainian teams and the more traditional Georgian and Armenian game based around individual skill and self-expression.
The first two goals were thrilling. Alan Hansen was thoroughly deceived by a brilliant piece of David Kipiani trickery in the penalty box and the veteran set up Vladimir Gutsaev for the opener. The second came after defender Giorgi Chilaya charged 60 yards upfield from left-back then neatly set up Ramaz Shengalia to cutely chip Ray Clemence inside the penalty box. Older Liverpool fans might have appreciated the symmetry between Chilaya’s surge and a similar one by Giacinto Facchetti for Internazionale at the San Siro in a European Cup tie 15 years earlier.
Liverpool’s players looked baffled and bemused. The club experienced losses during their years of dominance in the European Cup between 1977 and 1985, but this was one of the very few occasions when they were simply outclassed and manager Bob Paisley was magnanimous enough to admit as much.
Tbilisi’s next English experience came against West Ham in the Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-final in 1981. The first leg at the Boleyn Ground turned into a masterclass of intelligent, flexible and incisive football by the visitors, who demonstrated some of the best counter-attacking you’re ever likely to see. Footage from this match should be included as part of the learning materials for Uefa coaching courses.
West Ham’s players spent much of the evening chasing slippery white shadows forlornly while trying to keep the scoreline respectable – their eventual 4-1 defeat flattered them considerably. The romp started with an opening Tbilisi goal that was so cartoonishly good that it might have been thought of as too far-fetched had it been sketched out for Roy Race himself.
After a succession of rapid one-touch passes, Aleksandr Chivadze collected a knockdown 10 yards inside his own half, surged forward into West Ham territory and let fly from 30 yards with a dipping drive that sailed over the head of a flat-footed Phil Parkes. That’s Aleksandr Chivadze the central defender by the way, albeit a central defender with a greater mastery of the ball than any creative outfield British player I had seen. For someone used to watching agricultural British centre-halves thrash, blooter and whack footballs around a pitch, seeing this physically unassuming sweeper urbanely caress, massage and tease the ball into doing his bidding was a revelation.
It was a similar story throughout the team: the quick, clever feet of Kipiani were so adept at unbalancing opponents; Ramaz Shengelia had strength and a seemingly telepathic awareness of his colleagues’ runs; Vladimir Gutsayev was blessed with a finely tuned radar for goal; and Vitali Daraselia had a nimble, scuttling style that helped him find unlikely pockets of space on the pitch.
This game was a showcase for technical team play at its most accomplished: this group of athletic players were supremely focused, assured in their touch, adept with their flicks and feints, and smart at manufacturing passing angles. They had pace to burn but also had that rare mastery of the more complex dynamics that determine game tempo. The Georgians understood the notion that opposing players are much more disoriented by sudden change of pace than outright pace in itself. Tempo was there to be manipulated: to slow the game down to a crawl before exploding into life and overloading surprised opponents unable to adapt instantly to the quicker game being imposed upon them. West Ham’s players could do little more than wander around the pitch in a shell-shocked state, hoping to get in the way of the deft passing patterns of their Soviet opponents.
Having spilled hundreds of words of glowing praise for Tbilisi, incongruously I’ll now have to concede that this long-distance love affair could probably only have originated from a British football fan. The team seemed to reserve their very best performances for games against English opposition. I filled in the yawning gaps by using the sound logic of youth: if they can play this well when I see them, then it stands to reason they must play just as brilliantly every week when I’m not watching.
But Tbilisi’s broader record in European competition during these years is unremarkable and my view might not be as rose-tinted if, for example, I had been able to watch highlights of their 4-0 pummelling by Grasshoppers Zurich in the 1977-78 Uefa Cup. And then there were the underwhelming European exits to Hertha Berlin, Hamburg and Standard Liege.
Even their defining moment – the 1981 Cup Winners’ Cup success – came after the dourest of finals against the modest East Germans of Carl Zeiss Jena. So had I been a young football fan in mainland Europe rather than Britain, perhaps the enduring memories of my Soviet Supermen might be more focused on their flaws: the lack of command in the air defensively or the unreliable keeper, Gabelia, who was prone to avoidable error after avoidable error.
After decades in the European wilderness it was nice to see Tbilisi back in the limelight recently, when they hosted the 2015 Uefa Super Cup between Barcelona and Sevilla. Admittedly the city and its shiny modern Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena was the focus rather than its famous football club, but providing a fitting venue for Spain’s elite clubs to do battle is as close as Tbilisiis going to get to the big time again. In this Champions League era the days when a breakout club from one of Europe’s more unlikely regions could make such a big splash are sadly long gone.
Of course it’s easy to forget that back in the days of the Soviet Top League, Dinamo Tbilisi enjoyed entrenched privilege in the way that modern super clubs backed by oligarchs do today. Army patronage and political influence right at the heart of the Communist Party conferred many advantages that were gradually stripped away following the break up of the Soviet Union.
Since the 1990s Dinamo Tbilisi have been a big fish in the very small pond of Georgian football, both the cause and the victim of a league that is uncompetitive because football in Georgia was emasculated to concentrate its resources in the advancement of the Dinamo cause. The dispiriting reality of the club’s contemporary standing was never better reflected than in their 8-0 aggregate defeat against Tottenham in the Europa League play-off round two years ago – a chastening defeat in their first competitive meeting with an English club since those halcyon days in the 1980s.
No matter though. Just as my parents’ generation had Cosmonauts and the Space Race to offer up a persuasive case that Soviet communism represented a bright future and could be quite sexy, so Soviet footballers achieved a similarly sterling propaganda job on me. I cling to my childhood impressions and the unshakeable belief that between 1978 and 1981, Dinamo Tbilisi were the closest team in spirit the European game had seen since the total-football era Ajax. And anyone who says differently is a bourgeois revisionist.
Dinamo Tbilisi 3-0 Feyenoord, Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final, April 1981
West Ham 1-4 Dinamo Tbilisi, Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-final, March 1981
Dinamo Tbilisi 3-0 Liverpool, European Cup, October 1979
Dinamo Tbilisi 2-1 Carl Zeiss Jena, Cup Winners’ Cup final, May 1981
By Craig McCracken for Beyond The Last Man, of the Guardian Sport Network
The Dinamo Tbilisi team celebrate with the European Cup Winner trophy. Photograph: Action Images
Craig McCracken
Monday 7 September 2015 13.40 BST Last modified on Monday 4 April 2016 13.18 BST
In the decades before blanket television coverage of European football became the norm, little was known about clubs from the furthest of far-flung continental outposts. Exposure was fleeting, usually coming in the form of snatched, crackly highlight packages on Sportsweek, which were squeezed in after the boxing, darts and curling. So, when the provincial Georgians of Dinamo Tbilisi were broadcast into British homes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, their extraordinary quality came as a mysterious and exotic bolt from the blue.
My mind was a blur of questions: who are these footballing supermen and in what sinister Soviet sports laboratory have they been manufactured? Why don’t they smile more when they’re really, really good at football? And can communism be a bad thing if it produces athletes like this?
A startled British public was introduced to this Tbilisi side when they played Liverpool in the first round of the European Cup in 1979-80. Drawing the recent two-time winners and favourites offered the most daunting of debuts in Europe’s premier club competition, but at no stage of either leg did the Georgian club look remotely cowed by their heavyweight opponents. Only finishing that fell short of their elevated levels of technical play allowed Liverpool to edge the Anfield leg 2-1. Tbilisi’s promise in the first leg was fully realised in the return as they eased to a 3-0 victory in a packed Boris Paichadze National Stadium.
Their performance that afternoon was resoundingly accomplished. Tbilisi’s approach harmoniously blended the best of two seemingly conflicting playing styles: the hard-running, quick-passing game typical of Russian and Ukrainian teams and the more traditional Georgian and Armenian game based around individual skill and self-expression.
The first two goals were thrilling. Alan Hansen was thoroughly deceived by a brilliant piece of David Kipiani trickery in the penalty box and the veteran set up Vladimir Gutsaev for the opener. The second came after defender Giorgi Chilaya charged 60 yards upfield from left-back then neatly set up Ramaz Shengalia to cutely chip Ray Clemence inside the penalty box. Older Liverpool fans might have appreciated the symmetry between Chilaya’s surge and a similar one by Giacinto Facchetti for Internazionale at the San Siro in a European Cup tie 15 years earlier.
Liverpool’s players looked baffled and bemused. The club experienced losses during their years of dominance in the European Cup between 1977 and 1985, but this was one of the very few occasions when they were simply outclassed and manager Bob Paisley was magnanimous enough to admit as much.
Tbilisi’s next English experience came against West Ham in the Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-final in 1981. The first leg at the Boleyn Ground turned into a masterclass of intelligent, flexible and incisive football by the visitors, who demonstrated some of the best counter-attacking you’re ever likely to see. Footage from this match should be included as part of the learning materials for Uefa coaching courses.
West Ham’s players spent much of the evening chasing slippery white shadows forlornly while trying to keep the scoreline respectable – their eventual 4-1 defeat flattered them considerably. The romp started with an opening Tbilisi goal that was so cartoonishly good that it might have been thought of as too far-fetched had it been sketched out for Roy Race himself.
After a succession of rapid one-touch passes, Aleksandr Chivadze collected a knockdown 10 yards inside his own half, surged forward into West Ham territory and let fly from 30 yards with a dipping drive that sailed over the head of a flat-footed Phil Parkes. That’s Aleksandr Chivadze the central defender by the way, albeit a central defender with a greater mastery of the ball than any creative outfield British player I had seen. For someone used to watching agricultural British centre-halves thrash, blooter and whack footballs around a pitch, seeing this physically unassuming sweeper urbanely caress, massage and tease the ball into doing his bidding was a revelation.
It was a similar story throughout the team: the quick, clever feet of Kipiani were so adept at unbalancing opponents; Ramaz Shengelia had strength and a seemingly telepathic awareness of his colleagues’ runs; Vladimir Gutsayev was blessed with a finely tuned radar for goal; and Vitali Daraselia had a nimble, scuttling style that helped him find unlikely pockets of space on the pitch.
This game was a showcase for technical team play at its most accomplished: this group of athletic players were supremely focused, assured in their touch, adept with their flicks and feints, and smart at manufacturing passing angles. They had pace to burn but also had that rare mastery of the more complex dynamics that determine game tempo. The Georgians understood the notion that opposing players are much more disoriented by sudden change of pace than outright pace in itself. Tempo was there to be manipulated: to slow the game down to a crawl before exploding into life and overloading surprised opponents unable to adapt instantly to the quicker game being imposed upon them. West Ham’s players could do little more than wander around the pitch in a shell-shocked state, hoping to get in the way of the deft passing patterns of their Soviet opponents.
Having spilled hundreds of words of glowing praise for Tbilisi, incongruously I’ll now have to concede that this long-distance love affair could probably only have originated from a British football fan. The team seemed to reserve their very best performances for games against English opposition. I filled in the yawning gaps by using the sound logic of youth: if they can play this well when I see them, then it stands to reason they must play just as brilliantly every week when I’m not watching.
But Tbilisi’s broader record in European competition during these years is unremarkable and my view might not be as rose-tinted if, for example, I had been able to watch highlights of their 4-0 pummelling by Grasshoppers Zurich in the 1977-78 Uefa Cup. And then there were the underwhelming European exits to Hertha Berlin, Hamburg and Standard Liege.
Even their defining moment – the 1981 Cup Winners’ Cup success – came after the dourest of finals against the modest East Germans of Carl Zeiss Jena. So had I been a young football fan in mainland Europe rather than Britain, perhaps the enduring memories of my Soviet Supermen might be more focused on their flaws: the lack of command in the air defensively or the unreliable keeper, Gabelia, who was prone to avoidable error after avoidable error.
After decades in the European wilderness it was nice to see Tbilisi back in the limelight recently, when they hosted the 2015 Uefa Super Cup between Barcelona and Sevilla. Admittedly the city and its shiny modern Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena was the focus rather than its famous football club, but providing a fitting venue for Spain’s elite clubs to do battle is as close as Tbilisiis going to get to the big time again. In this Champions League era the days when a breakout club from one of Europe’s more unlikely regions could make such a big splash are sadly long gone.
Of course it’s easy to forget that back in the days of the Soviet Top League, Dinamo Tbilisi enjoyed entrenched privilege in the way that modern super clubs backed by oligarchs do today. Army patronage and political influence right at the heart of the Communist Party conferred many advantages that were gradually stripped away following the break up of the Soviet Union.
Since the 1990s Dinamo Tbilisi have been a big fish in the very small pond of Georgian football, both the cause and the victim of a league that is uncompetitive because football in Georgia was emasculated to concentrate its resources in the advancement of the Dinamo cause. The dispiriting reality of the club’s contemporary standing was never better reflected than in their 8-0 aggregate defeat against Tottenham in the Europa League play-off round two years ago – a chastening defeat in their first competitive meeting with an English club since those halcyon days in the 1980s.
No matter though. Just as my parents’ generation had Cosmonauts and the Space Race to offer up a persuasive case that Soviet communism represented a bright future and could be quite sexy, so Soviet footballers achieved a similarly sterling propaganda job on me. I cling to my childhood impressions and the unshakeable belief that between 1978 and 1981, Dinamo Tbilisi were the closest team in spirit the European game had seen since the total-football era Ajax. And anyone who says differently is a bourgeois revisionist.
Dinamo Tbilisi 3-0 Feyenoord, Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final, April 1981
West Ham 1-4 Dinamo Tbilisi, Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-final, March 1981
Dinamo Tbilisi 3-0 Liverpool, European Cup, October 1979
Dinamo Tbilisi 2-1 Carl Zeiss Jena, Cup Winners’ Cup final, May 1981
Kipiani vs Fachetti
Inter Milan 0-1 TbilissiKipiani vs Liverpool - Hansen - the assist
Kipiani vs Hambourg
Passing skills VS Japan
Random comparisons between him and other greats, note that they aren't facts or necessarily accurate, and not a representation of my opinion.
The invitable and unquestionable PES Stats ranking: Don't read this crap, seriously stop reading, ok you stubborn bastards.
Best long passers in history:
98
97: Andrea PIRLO 2005-2007, Michel PLATINI 1980-1986, Diego MARADONA 1992-1994, Wim VAN HANEGEM
96: GERSON, Puck VAN HEEL, César CUETO, Diego MARADONA 1976-1982
95: David KIPIANI, Francisco ARCE, Juan Sebastián VERÓN, Ernst OCWIRK, Gianni RIVERA, Stanley MATTHEWS,Glenn HODDLE, Nils Liedholm
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Great work here all from the nice matchup graphics to the thoughtful player profiles.
Giorgi Kinkladze also deserves a mention for his dribbling skills (and his goal against MUFC )
(and his goal against MUFC )What about Sunday, Monday or Tuesday?
@RedTiger I have submitted my write up.
@Downcast - great stuff. Kipiani easily draws comparison with Zizou for his elegant and nonchalant style.
Igor Leonidovich Chislenko (Russian: Игорь Леонидович Численко, 4 January 1939 — 22 September 1994) was a Soviet association football player. He played over 200 league games for FC Dinamo Moscow, winning two Soviet league titles and the Soviet Cup on one occasion. He also played for the USSR national football team, appearing 53 times, and scoring 20 goals. He was on the 1962 and 1966 World Cup teams (4 goals in 8 games).
GOAL - WC 1962 - USSR - Columbia - Starting and closing point
GOAL - WC 1962 USSR - Chile - Starting and closing point
GOAL - WC 1966 - USSR - Hungary
GOAL - WC 1966 - USSR - Italy
Others
Post below written by @harms
GOAL - WC 1962 - USSR - Columbia - Starting and closing point
GOAL - WC 1962 USSR - Chile - Starting and closing point
GOAL - WC 1966 - USSR - Hungary
GOAL - WC 1966 - USSR - Italy
Others
Post below written by @harms
Last edited:
give us an hour or so and we'll get it to you
Well? I'm heading out soon.
A gentle reminder - if you'll fail to send me something, it will be up to Raees to allow a reschedule.
good to see that scheduling went pretty fast after recent discussions in ideas thread.
I've submitted a quick writeup bro, should start soon
Will be home in about an hour and will start the thread then
Behind the curtain, you all have to know the real name of @harms is Jonathan Wilson. Official book of the draft below:
From the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo, where turning up for training involved dodging snipers' bullets, to the crumbling splendour of Budapest's Bozsik Stadium, where the likes of Puskás and Kocsis masterminded the fall of England, the landscape of Eastern Europe has changed immeasurably since the fall of communism. Jonathan Wilson has travelled extensively behind the old Iron Curtain, viewing life beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall through the lens of football.
From the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo, where turning up for training involved dodging snipers' bullets, to the crumbling splendour of Budapest's Bozsik Stadium, where the likes of Puskás and Kocsis masterminded the fall of England, the landscape of Eastern Europe has changed immeasurably since the fall of communism. Jonathan Wilson has travelled extensively behind the old Iron Curtain, viewing life beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall through the lens of football.
Ferenc 'Bamba' Deak
Stats, Records, accomplishments etc
Stats, Records, accomplishments etc
- 6th most prolific forward of all time (576+ official goals) (Most prolific forwards) and 2nd most prolific forward in the draft after Puskas.
- Held the record for most goals in a season for close to 60 years, before a certain Messi came and broke it (Most goals in a season). He scored 66 goals in one season, He features again in the list of highest scorers in a season with 59 goals in season 48/49.
- Holds the record for best goals to game ratio in international football for players who played 20 or more games. With 29 goals in 20 games and a 1.45 goals per game ratio he narrowly beat Just Fontaine for that record.
- Features 3 times in rsssf's world league top scorer list - http://www.rsssf.com/miscellaneous/worldtops.html -
Code:
1946 Ferenc Déak Szentlorinci (Hungary) 66
1947 Ferenc Déak Szentlorinci (Hungary) 48
1948 Ferenc Puskás Kispest Budapest (Hungary) 50
1949 Ferenc Déak Ferencvárosi TC (Hungary) 59These stats in itself are more than enough to showcase what a lethal finisher Deak was. Even if you forget about league or opposition quality for a minute nobody gets such stats without being an exceptionally good player. But lets dig deeper to establish the context in which these numbers should be taken.
International record
International record is a good way to judge a player's quality. While Deak's international record up until to the point he became unavailable due to political reasons (more on that below) looks impeccable stats wise, we should take a closer look to see what kind of opposition he faced. Deak played in primarily two international competitions - the Balkan cup, which was a competition that ran till 1980 and was participated by Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria etc. Hungary entered the competition first in 1947 and won it in first attempt with Deak being top scorer.
The other Competition was CEIC (precursor to European cup) of 48-53 (http://www.rsssf.com/tablesd/drgero5.html) where he was second highest goal scorer with 7 goals after Puskas (10). Puskas gets a lot of credit and is rightfully remembered as one of the CEIC's greatest players along with Sarosi, Meazza, Sindelaar etc but Deak was actually outscoring him while both were playing. Deak only got to play 6 games where he scored 7 goals, while Puskas was second best scorer with 6 goals.
The other Competition was CEIC (precursor to European cup) of 48-53 (http://www.rsssf.com/tablesd/drgero5.html) where he was second highest goal scorer with 7 goals after Puskas (10). Puskas gets a lot of credit and is rightfully remembered as one of the CEIC's greatest players along with Sarosi, Meazza, Sindelaar etc but Deak was actually outscoring him while both were playing. Deak only got to play 6 games where he scored 7 goals, while Puskas was second best scorer with 6 goals.
League quality
To be fair Hungarian league has always been a rather attacking league and its not one of the best leagues these days. But it wasn't true in the late 40s and 50s. While I don't have league standing data before 1960, data here Shows that between 1960 - 1975 Hungarian league was 2nd best league in Europe for 5 years, and was the one of top 4 leagues for 10 out of those 15 years. Its also evident that league quality probably decreased after the decline of Aranycsapat generation. Hungary was European champion and the best team in the world and Hungarian league was overflowing with talent at that time with likes of Czibor, Kocsis, Hidegkuti, Puskas, Bozsik, Kubala, Pelota, Nyers & Szucs playing in one league. Kocsis and Czibor were even Deak's team mates in his brilliant 1948 season where he scored 59 goals. In this company Deak's record is without a doubt outstanding.
Another way to assess the quality of Hungarian league would be to take a look at the players who got out of the country and played in other high level legaues. Istvan Nyers played in Hungarian league and was Deak's team mate in national squad before moving to Italy to play for Inter milan (Which ruled him out of contention for National team). He dominated Serie A winning top scorer award once and going toe to toe with Nordhal scoring 133 goals. Kubala & Puskas dominated la liga, while Kocsis, Czibor etc were also pretty good.
The point of all this is not to prove that he is as good as say Puskas or Hidegkuti as they were more complete players and we don't have enough data to suggest that Deak was on their level. But he is definitely underrated due to not being part of Hungary's golden team and not moving abroad to play. In terms of pure finishing ability he is right up there with the very best forwards.
Another way to assess the quality of Hungarian league would be to take a look at the players who got out of the country and played in other high level legaues. Istvan Nyers played in Hungarian league and was Deak's team mate in national squad before moving to Italy to play for Inter milan (Which ruled him out of contention for National team). He dominated Serie A winning top scorer award once and going toe to toe with Nordhal scoring 133 goals. Kubala & Puskas dominated la liga, while Kocsis, Czibor etc were also pretty good.
The point of all this is not to prove that he is as good as say Puskas or Hidegkuti as they were more complete players and we don't have enough data to suggest that Deak was on their level. But he is definitely underrated due to not being part of Hungary's golden team and not moving abroad to play. In terms of pure finishing ability he is right up there with the very best forwards.
Playing style
He was a big strong player with a very powerful shot. I haven't read about him being a particularly gifted dribbler or passer but he was someone who would convert every half chance provided to him. In his words -
Ferenc Deak said:
Biography
Early days
Since a young age Deak was a penalty box guy, in that he wanted to be a goalkeeper. At the age of 15 he got hit on head by a football (Apparantly by Bozsik's brother) while keeping and became uncocious. His parents took it really seriously and forbid him from playing football. Deak who loved football but was an obidient child, just used to hang around the ground sitting outside and kicking the ball in whenever it gets out. People say that this is where he starting to get his thundrous shot, legend has it that he didn't just used to kick in the loose ball but take shots with pin point accuracy. In one of these moments Berkessy Elemér ( who played for Barcelona & Hungary and coached Zargoza) discovered the potential of Deak's talent. It was also Elmer who convinced Deak's parents to let him play and asked them to not worry about Deak's head as he would no longer be playing as a goalkeeper but would be a great center forward.
He started in the third division debuting with 6 goals for SZAC. 1945/46 season launched him to international fame. It was the seaon he scored 66 goals. Following year he wasn't as good and scored 'only' 49 games. This was enough for mighty Ferencvaros FC to swoop in for him and make him part of a great collection of player inclduing Czibor, Kocsis, Budai, Meszaros etc. He repaid the faith with 59 goals in 48/49 season propelling them to title.
At this point everything was going great, Ferencarvos fans adored him and his feeling was reciprocal. But after about a year later he had to join their arch rivals Ujpest Dozsa.
THE SLAP:
In the summer of 1950 Deak along with team mates was relaxing in a bar. While being drunk he started to sing rather loudly. 2 AVH officers were also in the bar that night and while they suffer through Deak's song for some time they eventually got up and asked him to shut up. Deak ended up slapping the officers. After some time he was called by Csáki Alexander, the Interior Ministry press officer, who also functioned as the president of Dózsa and was given a choice of either playing for Ujpest Dozsa or go to jail. It wasn't really a choice, Deak took it and became a traitor among Ferencarvos fans.
National team, communism, politics etc -
At Ujpest Deak faced difficulty in settling in. Ujpest already had its own big goal scoring star in Ferenc Szusa. Still Deak produced a respectable 53 goals from 77 games. Deak's political opinions clashed with communist party and when in 1949 a staunch communist Gustav Sebes became the manager it was made clear to him that Deak is not available for selection anymore. This partially led to Mighty Magyars as without his primary forward Sebes had to modify W-M to M-M (He was already doing that with his club side) and pull the center forward back in a false number 9 position which Hidegkuti made his own and the rest is history. Deak always resented his national team. Missing out on Olympic victory, game of the century and being part of overall one of the greatest team of all time. In a gala in Munich he said that he never watched the game of century. Out of all the golden team players he kept contact only with Puskas.
Chances to move to other leagues -
The communist government also restricted Deak from going out of country to play football. However before his problems with government there were two chances when he could have seriously left and moved on to a new team aboard. The first came in a tour of Palestine where after he score a few goals, Fenerbache took interest in Deak. Deak refused the offer first time but Fenerbache did not relent and send him a letter inviting him for their 50 year celebration. The rumor is that Deak never recieved the letter and it was lost. His second opportunity was much clearer. Grande Torino in 1949 decided that they need Hungary's center forward's services. One version claim that Torino offered $150K for him and other says that they offered a blank check to get the deal done. Deak refused to move and In hindsight it turned out to be a good decision for him as only after months the SuperEga disaster struck.
Awards -
He got recognition for his career much later. In 1994 he received the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, Officer's Cross, In 1999 (posthumously) he was awarded the Hungarian Heritage Award, and in 2000 became Pestszentimre-Pestszentlőrinc honorary citizen. A year before his death, in 1997, the IFFHS Gala in Munich - Ferenc Puskas, Gerd Müller and Hugo Sanchez's company - he was awarded the title of top scorer of the Century.
While he could have been a legend had he was allowed to move to other leagues or play in national team, its hard to feel too sorry for him. He was very reckless in the night when he slapped officers and its only because of his football his life was spared. What seems undisputed among many Hungarian fans is that he was a great player and would have tasted success in any league he has gone to.
Videos:
There is not much material available on him, but here are some really short highlights from the international games where he scored -
Hungary vs Italy (June 12, 1949, CEIC) 1-1 Deak 29 minute
Austria vs Hungary (02 May 1948, CEIC) 3-2 Deak socred at 1:40 in video
Austria was quite strong in those days with the likes of Ocwirk and Happel in the team and had already beaten Hungary at home. But Hungarian forwards Puskas and Deak pick them apart in May 49 game with 6-1 victory. Puskas scoring 3 and Deak scoring 2, could not find that video though.
Hungary vs Bulgaria (30 Oct 1949, Friendly) 5-0 Deak scored the first goal
Hungary vs Poland (19 Sep 1948, Balkan cup) 6-2 Deak socred 2nd and 4th Hungarian goal.
Since a young age Deak was a penalty box guy, in that he wanted to be a goalkeeper. At the age of 15 he got hit on head by a football (Apparantly by Bozsik's brother) while keeping and became uncocious. His parents took it really seriously and forbid him from playing football. Deak who loved football but was an obidient child, just used to hang around the ground sitting outside and kicking the ball in whenever it gets out. People say that this is where he starting to get his thundrous shot, legend has it that he didn't just used to kick in the loose ball but take shots with pin point accuracy. In one of these moments Berkessy Elemér ( who played for Barcelona & Hungary and coached Zargoza) discovered the potential of Deak's talent. It was also Elmer who convinced Deak's parents to let him play and asked them to not worry about Deak's head as he would no longer be playing as a goalkeeper but would be a great center forward.
He started in the third division debuting with 6 goals for SZAC. 1945/46 season launched him to international fame. It was the seaon he scored 66 goals. Following year he wasn't as good and scored 'only' 49 games. This was enough for mighty Ferencvaros FC to swoop in for him and make him part of a great collection of player inclduing Czibor, Kocsis, Budai, Meszaros etc. He repaid the faith with 59 goals in 48/49 season propelling them to title.
At this point everything was going great, Ferencarvos fans adored him and his feeling was reciprocal. But after about a year later he had to join their arch rivals Ujpest Dozsa.
THE SLAP:
In the summer of 1950 Deak along with team mates was relaxing in a bar. While being drunk he started to sing rather loudly. 2 AVH officers were also in the bar that night and while they suffer through Deak's song for some time they eventually got up and asked him to shut up. Deak ended up slapping the officers. After some time he was called by Csáki Alexander, the Interior Ministry press officer, who also functioned as the president of Dózsa and was given a choice of either playing for Ujpest Dozsa or go to jail. It wasn't really a choice, Deak took it and became a traitor among Ferencarvos fans.
National team, communism, politics etc -
At Ujpest Deak faced difficulty in settling in. Ujpest already had its own big goal scoring star in Ferenc Szusa. Still Deak produced a respectable 53 goals from 77 games. Deak's political opinions clashed with communist party and when in 1949 a staunch communist Gustav Sebes became the manager it was made clear to him that Deak is not available for selection anymore. This partially led to Mighty Magyars as without his primary forward Sebes had to modify W-M to M-M (He was already doing that with his club side) and pull the center forward back in a false number 9 position which Hidegkuti made his own and the rest is history. Deak always resented his national team. Missing out on Olympic victory, game of the century and being part of overall one of the greatest team of all time. In a gala in Munich he said that he never watched the game of century. Out of all the golden team players he kept contact only with Puskas.
Chances to move to other leagues -
The communist government also restricted Deak from going out of country to play football. However before his problems with government there were two chances when he could have seriously left and moved on to a new team aboard. The first came in a tour of Palestine where after he score a few goals, Fenerbache took interest in Deak. Deak refused the offer first time but Fenerbache did not relent and send him a letter inviting him for their 50 year celebration. The rumor is that Deak never recieved the letter and it was lost. His second opportunity was much clearer. Grande Torino in 1949 decided that they need Hungary's center forward's services. One version claim that Torino offered $150K for him and other says that they offered a blank check to get the deal done. Deak refused to move and In hindsight it turned out to be a good decision for him as only after months the SuperEga disaster struck.
Awards -
He got recognition for his career much later. In 1994 he received the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, Officer's Cross, In 1999 (posthumously) he was awarded the Hungarian Heritage Award, and in 2000 became Pestszentimre-Pestszentlőrinc honorary citizen. A year before his death, in 1997, the IFFHS Gala in Munich - Ferenc Puskas, Gerd Müller and Hugo Sanchez's company - he was awarded the title of top scorer of the Century.
While he could have been a legend had he was allowed to move to other leagues or play in national team, its hard to feel too sorry for him. He was very reckless in the night when he slapped officers and its only because of his football his life was spared. What seems undisputed among many Hungarian fans is that he was a great player and would have tasted success in any league he has gone to.
Videos:
There is not much material available on him, but here are some really short highlights from the international games where he scored -
Hungary vs Italy (June 12, 1949, CEIC) 1-1 Deak 29 minute
Austria vs Hungary (02 May 1948, CEIC) 3-2 Deak socred at 1:40 in video
Austria was quite strong in those days with the likes of Ocwirk and Happel in the team and had already beaten Hungary at home. But Hungarian forwards Puskas and Deak pick them apart in May 49 game with 6-1 victory. Puskas scoring 3 and Deak scoring 2, could not find that video though.
Hungary vs Bulgaria (30 Oct 1949, Friendly) 5-0 Deak scored the first goal
Hungary vs Poland (19 Sep 1948, Balkan cup) 6-2 Deak socred 2nd and 4th Hungarian goal.
Sources - http://www.hatharom.com/2011/06/20/deak_ferenc_a_csalodott_golrekorder_portre
http://index.hu/sport/2015/04/30/deak_ferenc_bamba_golkiraly_ftc_szentlorinc_ujpest/
http://www.rsssf.com/miscellaneous/fdeak-intlg.html
@harms
Last edited:
The first game is on
Klaus Urbanczyk has chosen the stadium as a meeting point. Here, at the HFC, where he is a great figure, where he is perhaps the best-known face of the club's history, he wants to tell. He sits at a table in the rather bare foyer to the Presseraum. The words bubble just out of it. Klaus Urbanczyk, Halles football icon, is now 75 years old. The man has a lot to tell. But all at once he is quiet. The words stutter, he fights with a lump in his throat. "That was even worse than Eindhoven," he says, surging.
Eindhoven, the Hotelbrand in the "Silberne Seepferd", where he almost lost his life with the HFC Chemie team in 1971, now plays only a side role. For the first time, he wants to talk about the worst tragedy of his life. "Every day I go to my cellar. There is a poster hanging on the wall. This is Christopher, nine years old, in the HFC jersey. A cheerful blond curly boy. I always greet him, usually with, Hello, Chrissi, "says Klaus Urbanczyk.
Chrissi, his grandson. Twelve years ago he died. Leukemia, this insidious blood cancer, "against which there is no remedy," as Urbanczyk firmly believes. From the experience of the family drama. "Christopher was nine, then he got a cold, suddenly nosebleeds. In the clinic it was then said that he must stay. Diagnosis: Leukemia. "
A shock, the life-loving boy, who practiced with HFC coach Conradi and "would have become a really good footballer", as the grandpa is sure, must suddenly fight for his life. Chemotherapy should help. The boy gets fat, his hair falls out. "Mutti, I'm so ugly. What if everything does not help? I will die, "asks the desperate child, who can hardly bear the changes due to the medicine. And Christopher has a wish: "I've never been to the Baltic Sea." So Klaus Urbanczyk snatches his grandson to fulfill his longing for the sea. "There he is really bloated. It looked as if he could do it. "
"The grief comes again and again"
The hope was broken. Back in Halle there was the relapse. A bone marrow donor was found, but the transplant did not help. "And then you stand at the grave, ask yourself why there was no salvation and would like to jump behind," says Klaus Urbanczyk. He is close to tears. "It never goes away, the grief comes again and again."
It is the story of Klaus Urbanczyk, which is hardly known. So change the subject, back to football, the passion that has made him well known. There is much to tell. From the excitement before his first international match in 1961 in Morocco, from the invitation for a Europa selection 1964, supervised by Bundestrainer Sepp Herberger. "I was proud. But they did not let me go. It was reported that an important test was in the run-up to Olympia, "says Urbanczyk, who was already called" Banne "at that time. "Then we went to Straußberg in the direction of Vorwärts Berlin. Terribly important. The Stasi was only afraid that I would descend to the West to earn more. "Although the trained locksmith was only 800 Marks a month at the Chemical Hall, far less than the colleagues from Jena, but an escape" came for me Never in question ". He wanted to spare his wife Karin reprisals, Westmark in exchange for family suffering - never.
FOOTBALL MATTERS
At the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the captain of the team of coach Karoly Soos missed the game by bronze (3-1 against Egypt). And because there were only plaques for the eleven players on the pitch, he was given spontaneously by the Jenaer Peter Rock. "I will never forget the gesture." Like a game against Great England.
"In the first half, Bobby Charlton played knots in my legs. Soos did not change me anyway. "Show your Sliding Tackling," he said. "Slipping into the opponent. And Urbanczyk signed off the star. He later asked at the banquet, who had been this snappy defender who had stuck him so stubbornly. Charlton thought that on the island there would be place for Urbanczyk in every top team. "Banne" felt honored, but he did not want to go away. At some point his salary was increased to 1,200 Marks.
Unschön was the departure from the national team. Again and again Urbanczyk had fought back after injuries, had marched forward - and actually indispensable. Then Georg Buschner followed Soos. "He then played my buddy Bernd Bransch and me against each other." Buschner wanted the four years younger Bransch, also HFC player, as Libero and captain. Urbanczyk was too proud to be let off by a coach, he preferred to return.
And then there was still Eindhoven. 1971. The Uefa-Pokal-Rückspiel at the PSV, which never took place, because the hotel burned in the night. Klaus Urbanczyk points to the huge scars on his forearms. "Everything was cut up. I've smashed windows to get out of the blazing house after we had gone downhill with the elevator and almost ran out of it, "says Banne.
Brand 1971 in Eindhoven: reports from the "freedom"
From six meters high he had jumped onto a canopy and then into a shattered container. After he had saved some people, he collapsed on the road. "The last thing I remember was that I roared my blood type: 'Zero, Rhesus factor positive'."
This was heard by a doctor who had also escaped from the inferno. Urbanczyk woke up in the hospital and learned that his HFC team colleague Wolfgang Hoffmann had lost his life in the flames. "He had already found the right way but wanted to get some West clothes he had just bought in Hungary," says Urbanczyk.
Today, at the small celebration in the closest family circle, they may talk about all the events. But in any case, "Banne" will go into the cellar of the house, sadly look at the picture and commemorate with a "Hello, Chrissi" of the grandson.
HIS STATUS AS A PLAYER
At the beginning of the 1960s, Urbanczyk was held to be one of the best right defenders in the world, on account of his speed and his slide-tackling skills.He played for East Germany between 1961 and 1969.
In a survey among managers of the magazine "Deutsches Sportecho", Urbanczyk was voted the best right defender of the 1962–63 season. At the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964, Urbanczyk's popularity rose further. He was one of the key figures of East Germany's team (representing the United Team of Germany) that reached the semi-final of the tournament. In the semi-final against the Czechoslovakia, Urbanczyk collided with his own goalkeeper Jürgen Heinsch and suffered a complicated knee injury, including torn cruciates. East Germany lost the semi-final, but won the bronze medal against Egypt. In the same year, Urbanczyk won the East German Sportsperson of the Year award – the only time that a footballer was given an individual award. Urbanczyk also won the East German Footballer of the Year award in 1964.
@harms
POLAND of the 70's and early 80's
On 1 December 1970, Polish football history would change forever all due to one man. Kazimierz Gorski was named head coach of the national team. His success with the team was evident from the start with a gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Górski would later lead the team to another medal at the 1976 Olympics where they captured silver. However, nothing matched the two bronze medals at the 1974 and 1982 World Cups.
The team here has assembled a few key members of that famed squad.
Kazimierz Deyna
Kazimierz Deyna (23 October 1947 – 1 September 1989) was a Polish footballer, who played as an offensive midfielder in the playmaker role and was one of the most highly regarded players of his generation.
Deyna began playing youth football in 1958 at his local club Włókniarz Starogard Gdański. In 1966 he made one appearance for LKS Lodz. But he was quickly snapped up by Legia Warsaw. In communist Poland each team had its own "sponsor". The Warsaw club was much more powerful as it was the military club. Moreover it was the favourite club of the authorities. Deyna was called up into the army and in this way he had to play for Legia Warsaw. He made a name for himself during his first season, becoming one of Legia's most important players. In 1969 and 1970 his team won the Polish Championship. After his performances at the 1974 World Cup, European top-teams like AS Saint-Etienne, AC Milan, Inter Milan, AS Monaco, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich tried to acquire his services but he was unable to join due to the communist regime in Poland, preventing him from moving to Western-Europe. Real Madrid was so determined to acquire Deyna that they sent a shirt to Warsaw with his name and number "14".
On 24 April 1968, he made his debut for the national team of Poland in a match against Turkey in Chorzow. He won the gold medal in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and the bronze in Football World Cup 1976, after a match against Brazil. In 1972 he was also the Top Goalscorer of the Olympic Games, with a total of nine goals. In 1976 Summer Olympics his team yet again reached the finals and won the silver medal. Additionally, he was ranked third in the European Footballer of the Year for 1974, behind Johann Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer respectively.
Deyna played for Poland on 97 (84 after the deduction of Olympic Football Tournament competition games) occasions, scoring 41 goals, and often captained the side. He had the ability to score from unusual positions, for example directly from a corner. Because of his achievements and talents, he was chosen Football Player of the Year several times by Polish fans. In 1978 he captained Poland at the Football World Cup in Argentina, where the team reached the second phase
Zygmunt Anczok
Born March 14, 1946 in Lubliniec (Katowice province), son of John and Mary Ulfig, a graduate of the Technical Energy (1967) and coaching courses at the Katowice Academy of Physical Education (1981), coach class II. Player (177 cm, 79 kg) - left back, a local graduate of Sparta (1959-1963), the player Polonia Bytom (1963-1971, league), Gornik Zabrze (1971-1974), U.S. clubs in Chicago - the Vistula (1975), Katz Chicago 1975-1976) and the Norwegian Skeid Oslo (1977-1979, and league), as the first Polish player in the country. The Polonia Bytom enjoyed phenomenal success of American Football Cup Interligi (1965) and the Cup Rapp (1965), while playing in Górnik (three league seasons, 38 games) was in one year (1972) Polish champion and winner of the Polish Cup. He was 19 years old when he made his debut in the Polish National Team (1965 in a match against Scotland). He played a total of 48 A + 5 games ending his career in red and white team in the away match against Wales (1973). He was a great defender, playing "a thoroughly modern," ie, that it clung to his position, but moving the entire length of the pitch, often including the action offensive team. Fast, strength marathoner. All these demonstrated advantages, among others. the South American tour, when the famous Maracana in Rio de Janeiro had the attackers rivals such as Pele, Garrincha and Tostao. He confirmed it during the Olympic tournament.
Unfortunately, all too frequent injuries (four metatarsal fractures between the Olympics and World Championships in Munich in the FRG and the two operations meniscus in Oslo) made it did not comment further, the expected success. After retiring Competitive (1979) was a coach in his hometown Lubliniec, and after another illness (this time the pain in the hip, surgery and artificial hip), not being already pełnosprawnym, tried his luck in other professions (business, taxi, shop) until eventually had to retire. Awarded the Distinguished Master of Sports, among others. Gold and Silver Medal for Distinguished Achievement and Athletic Gold Cross of Merit (1972). Player of the year 1966. Together with W. Lubańskim occurred in the FIFA All Star Team (1971), who played for Łużnikach to celebrate the parting of the Soviet football goalkeeper Lev Yashin.
Jerzy Gorgon
Quick quiz: name the greatest non-British central defenders of all time. Go! Done? Good. Franz Beckenbauer plus one of the Italians, right?
A Twitter poll returned Beckenbauer and Franco Baresi as clear favourites, with other Italians nominated including Paolo Maldini, Giuseppe Bergomi, Fabio Cannavaro, Gaetano Scirea and Alessandro Nesta. Other nominations from across Europe included Marcel Desailly and Lillian Thuram of France, Carles Puyol and Fernando Hierro of Spain, Ronald Koeman and Jaap Stam of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Ireland's Paul McGrath. Argentines Roberto Ayala and Daniel Passarella also featured. The usual lot, in other words, along with Pascal Cygan, Jose Fonte, Steve Gohouri, William Prunier, Efe Sodje, William Gallas, and Zurab Khizanisvili, because people on the internet are hilarious.
Nobody, however, voted for 6'4" Polish stopper Jerzy Gorgon. This is because Kevin Keegan isn't on Twitter.
Gorgon -- a pretty scary-looking mother -- played most of his career for Górnik Zabrze between 1967 and 1980. He was part of the team that won five straight Polish Cups between 1968 and 1972, and as well as winning a couple of titles they reached the quarter-finals of the European Cup in 1968, and lost to Manchester City in the final of the 1970 UEFA Cup. Internationally, he played 55 times for Poland and won gold in the 1972 Olympics, and silver four years later. He was also part of the side that finished third in the 1974 World Cup.
Anyway, Gorgon doesn't have much to do with the game any more; he lives in Switzerland, he is an ambassador for Górnik, and he inaccurately predicted that Poland would easily beat England in their recent rain-delayed World Cup qualifier. However, way back in 1979, Kevin Keegan decided that he was just the man to partner Beckenbauer in his Greatest Not British XI of All-Time.
Keegan, as English footballers are wont to do, had decided to alleviate the tedium of being a professional by writing himself a book. Written with the Sunday People's Mike Langley, Kevin Keegan -- Against the World isn't quite the usual account of ‘what I did on my incredibly expensive holidays'. Chapter 2, for example, is called ‘The Decline of England', and opens rather wonderfully: "I danced in a Doncaster pub-disco one summer evening nine years ago neither knowing or caring that, thousands of miles away, Bobby Charlton's champagne had gone flat."
Having dealt with the failures of his nation and delivered his thoughts on Don Revie, goalkeepers, supporters and Germany, Keegan goes on to select his Greatest XI's -- one British, one Others -- to face off in the Keegan Cup. Of those Forriners, Keegan wrote "The team is packed with scorers," and he wasn't kidding: his four-man front-line reads Pelé, Johan Cruyff, Gerd Müller and Mario Kempes. Behind them he picked Brazilian genius Rivelino and AC Milan attack-dog Romeo Benetti, as thunderingly-moustachioed a midfield as was ever conceived. The full-backs were Giacinto Facchetti and Berti Vogts, who apparently used to be a footballer before he became a Scottish figure of fun. Sweeper was Franz Beckenbauer, and alongside him, winning the ball for the Kaiser to use, Gorgon.
Keegan's own explanation for his choice isn't particularly illuminating. Where Beckenbauer gets four paragraphs, an anecdote, and a healthy dollop of awe -- "Beckenbauer is not normal; he could see, or perhaps sense, everything behind me" -- his notes on Gorgon's entry read, in their entirety:
Jerzy Gorgon of Poland is my centre-half. ‘A donkey' was Brian Clough's assessment, but I think that Gorgon copes most effectively with his technical limitations. He is a strong stopper with some skill and would balance with my sweeper, who is best partnered by a big man willing to attack the ball.
Faint praise, they call that. While many of the traditional pantheon of All Time Great central defenders -- see that list above -- were yet to come. Even looking for a man to play alongside a sweeper, it's an interesting call to pick the big Pole ahead of, say, Scirea's club partner Claudio Gentile. Even more intriguingly, it doesn't appear that Keegan ever played against Gorgon.
Michał Zachodny, co-editor of Ekstraklasa magazine, suspects that Gorgon's style -- "similar to English defenders of the time" -- may have played a part in Keegan's choice. "He was a hard-tackling, fine-heading, long-punting central defender with a good turn. Apparently his opponents were simply scared of him." Zachodny also points out that Gorgon bumped up against English opposition on two notable occasions: the aforementioned UEFA Cup final, and playing for Poland in qualification for the 1974 World Cup.
England were expected to qualify easily from a three-team group comprising the Poles and Wales, but the first game, away in Chorzow, ended 2-0 to Poland as Gorgon and company defended stoutly and took advantage of a sloppy performance from Bobby Moore. Then, for the notorious Wembley return, Moore was dropped by Alf Ramsey. The match itself, a 1-1 draw, is part of footballing folklore -- here's Brian Clough calling Jan Tomaszewski a clown, there's Norman Hunter giving the ball away for Poland's goal -- though the nostalgic clip shows tend to elide Martin Peters's post-match confession that England's equalising penalty might not have been wholly warranted. "He barely touched me but I went flying. I dived. It wasn't a penalty, but the referee didn't see it that way". He, of course, was Jerzy Gorgon, who later recalled:
Fans and players were screaming 'animals' at us and it could break few with not as strong mentality as ours. Even though we were knackered after game with Cardiff, they were kicking us much harder than the Welsh team. We knew what to expect though. After the game they didn't even want to shake our hands.
Those qualifying games occupy a deeply sensitive place in the collective memory of English football: it was the first time the national team had failed to qualify for the World Cup since they'd deigned to grace FIFA with their presence, and it was the end of both Moore and Alf Ramsey, icon and overseer of the 1966 triumph. Keegan had made his debut in first game against Wales (Wales 0-1 England, described by Ramsey as "Neither exciting nor entertaining") and also played in the second (1-1, England booed off at Wembley), but missed both matches against Poland. His book is sadly silent on whether he spent the time watching the games, or in a bingo hall in Darlington, but you can see why the defensive heart of the team might have made an impression.
Back to the question of the all-time best centre-back. It's odd that the recollections of footballers often vary from the wider, accepted pantheon. Gorgon isn't the only player along these lines to have been lauded by his certain of his peers but neglected by history. Pietro Vierchowod, an Italian defender of Ukrainian descent, was named by both Gary Lineker and Diego Maradona as their toughest opponent. Linker described him as "brutal and lightning quick", while Maradona said "He was an animal, he had muscles up to his eyelashes". Yet he's another name generally missing from the conversation.
Obviously, elite footballers have knowledge not available to mere mortals: professional expertise, personal respect (or contempt), understanding of what the whole business involves, and so on and so forth. Doing something gives you a perspective on that thing that outsiders don't have. This doesn't make their views necessarily better or right -- there's more to it than that, and there are plenty of thick footballers -- and it certainly doesn't justify Alan Shearer, Pundit-at-Large, but it does mean they may approach a question from a different angle and arrive at a different conclusion. That's why so much time is spent interviewing them: the hope of insight. An entertaining recent example of this was provided by Carlos Tevez, who was asked, as one of the few people have been teammates of both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, who he considered the best he'd played with. Paul Scholes, he replied.
Even more generally, we might perhaps acknowledge that the pantheon is perhaps not quite as rigorous as we might like to assume. Entry depends not just on talent, or even what a player does with that talent, but also where he does it, how he does it, who he does it with, and what notice everybody else takes. Fashions come and go, and players are lost to the tides of history. If a footballer wins a trophy in Poland in the 1970s, and only Kevin Keegan is watching, does he make a sound?
Maybe, in another universe, Jerzinho Gorgonzola's mound of domestic and international silverware sees him estimated alongside Beckenbauer by the world at large, not just by a former England striker trying to pad out his book. Maybe footballing greatness is, at heart, an uncertain exercise dominated by luck, circumstance, and imperfection to a far greater extent than those of us who like telling stories about it would ever care to admit. As Gorgon's international coach Kazimierz Górski put it: "You can play football for 20 years and play 1,000 times for the national team and nobody will remember you."
On 1 December 1970, Polish football history would change forever all due to one man. Kazimierz Gorski was named head coach of the national team. His success with the team was evident from the start with a gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Górski would later lead the team to another medal at the 1976 Olympics where they captured silver. However, nothing matched the two bronze medals at the 1974 and 1982 World Cups.
The team here has assembled a few key members of that famed squad.
Kazimierz Deyna
Kazimierz Deyna (23 October 1947 – 1 September 1989) was a Polish footballer, who played as an offensive midfielder in the playmaker role and was one of the most highly regarded players of his generation.
Deyna began playing youth football in 1958 at his local club Włókniarz Starogard Gdański. In 1966 he made one appearance for LKS Lodz. But he was quickly snapped up by Legia Warsaw. In communist Poland each team had its own "sponsor". The Warsaw club was much more powerful as it was the military club. Moreover it was the favourite club of the authorities. Deyna was called up into the army and in this way he had to play for Legia Warsaw. He made a name for himself during his first season, becoming one of Legia's most important players. In 1969 and 1970 his team won the Polish Championship. After his performances at the 1974 World Cup, European top-teams like AS Saint-Etienne, AC Milan, Inter Milan, AS Monaco, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich tried to acquire his services but he was unable to join due to the communist regime in Poland, preventing him from moving to Western-Europe. Real Madrid was so determined to acquire Deyna that they sent a shirt to Warsaw with his name and number "14".
On 24 April 1968, he made his debut for the national team of Poland in a match against Turkey in Chorzow. He won the gold medal in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and the bronze in Football World Cup 1976, after a match against Brazil. In 1972 he was also the Top Goalscorer of the Olympic Games, with a total of nine goals. In 1976 Summer Olympics his team yet again reached the finals and won the silver medal. Additionally, he was ranked third in the European Footballer of the Year for 1974, behind Johann Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer respectively.
Deyna played for Poland on 97 (84 after the deduction of Olympic Football Tournament competition games) occasions, scoring 41 goals, and often captained the side. He had the ability to score from unusual positions, for example directly from a corner. Because of his achievements and talents, he was chosen Football Player of the Year several times by Polish fans. In 1978 he captained Poland at the Football World Cup in Argentina, where the team reached the second phase
Zygmunt Anczok
Born March 14, 1946 in Lubliniec (Katowice province), son of John and Mary Ulfig, a graduate of the Technical Energy (1967) and coaching courses at the Katowice Academy of Physical Education (1981), coach class II. Player (177 cm, 79 kg) - left back, a local graduate of Sparta (1959-1963), the player Polonia Bytom (1963-1971, league), Gornik Zabrze (1971-1974), U.S. clubs in Chicago - the Vistula (1975), Katz Chicago 1975-1976) and the Norwegian Skeid Oslo (1977-1979, and league), as the first Polish player in the country. The Polonia Bytom enjoyed phenomenal success of American Football Cup Interligi (1965) and the Cup Rapp (1965), while playing in Górnik (three league seasons, 38 games) was in one year (1972) Polish champion and winner of the Polish Cup. He was 19 years old when he made his debut in the Polish National Team (1965 in a match against Scotland). He played a total of 48 A + 5 games ending his career in red and white team in the away match against Wales (1973). He was a great defender, playing "a thoroughly modern," ie, that it clung to his position, but moving the entire length of the pitch, often including the action offensive team. Fast, strength marathoner. All these demonstrated advantages, among others. the South American tour, when the famous Maracana in Rio de Janeiro had the attackers rivals such as Pele, Garrincha and Tostao. He confirmed it during the Olympic tournament.
Unfortunately, all too frequent injuries (four metatarsal fractures between the Olympics and World Championships in Munich in the FRG and the two operations meniscus in Oslo) made it did not comment further, the expected success. After retiring Competitive (1979) was a coach in his hometown Lubliniec, and after another illness (this time the pain in the hip, surgery and artificial hip), not being already pełnosprawnym, tried his luck in other professions (business, taxi, shop) until eventually had to retire. Awarded the Distinguished Master of Sports, among others. Gold and Silver Medal for Distinguished Achievement and Athletic Gold Cross of Merit (1972). Player of the year 1966. Together with W. Lubańskim occurred in the FIFA All Star Team (1971), who played for Łużnikach to celebrate the parting of the Soviet football goalkeeper Lev Yashin.
Jerzy Gorgon
Quick quiz: name the greatest non-British central defenders of all time. Go! Done? Good. Franz Beckenbauer plus one of the Italians, right?
A Twitter poll returned Beckenbauer and Franco Baresi as clear favourites, with other Italians nominated including Paolo Maldini, Giuseppe Bergomi, Fabio Cannavaro, Gaetano Scirea and Alessandro Nesta. Other nominations from across Europe included Marcel Desailly and Lillian Thuram of France, Carles Puyol and Fernando Hierro of Spain, Ronald Koeman and Jaap Stam of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Ireland's Paul McGrath. Argentines Roberto Ayala and Daniel Passarella also featured. The usual lot, in other words, along with Pascal Cygan, Jose Fonte, Steve Gohouri, William Prunier, Efe Sodje, William Gallas, and Zurab Khizanisvili, because people on the internet are hilarious.
Nobody, however, voted for 6'4" Polish stopper Jerzy Gorgon. This is because Kevin Keegan isn't on Twitter.
Gorgon -- a pretty scary-looking mother -- played most of his career for Górnik Zabrze between 1967 and 1980. He was part of the team that won five straight Polish Cups between 1968 and 1972, and as well as winning a couple of titles they reached the quarter-finals of the European Cup in 1968, and lost to Manchester City in the final of the 1970 UEFA Cup. Internationally, he played 55 times for Poland and won gold in the 1972 Olympics, and silver four years later. He was also part of the side that finished third in the 1974 World Cup.
Anyway, Gorgon doesn't have much to do with the game any more; he lives in Switzerland, he is an ambassador for Górnik, and he inaccurately predicted that Poland would easily beat England in their recent rain-delayed World Cup qualifier. However, way back in 1979, Kevin Keegan decided that he was just the man to partner Beckenbauer in his Greatest Not British XI of All-Time.
Keegan, as English footballers are wont to do, had decided to alleviate the tedium of being a professional by writing himself a book. Written with the Sunday People's Mike Langley, Kevin Keegan -- Against the World isn't quite the usual account of ‘what I did on my incredibly expensive holidays'. Chapter 2, for example, is called ‘The Decline of England', and opens rather wonderfully: "I danced in a Doncaster pub-disco one summer evening nine years ago neither knowing or caring that, thousands of miles away, Bobby Charlton's champagne had gone flat."
Having dealt with the failures of his nation and delivered his thoughts on Don Revie, goalkeepers, supporters and Germany, Keegan goes on to select his Greatest XI's -- one British, one Others -- to face off in the Keegan Cup. Of those Forriners, Keegan wrote "The team is packed with scorers," and he wasn't kidding: his four-man front-line reads Pelé, Johan Cruyff, Gerd Müller and Mario Kempes. Behind them he picked Brazilian genius Rivelino and AC Milan attack-dog Romeo Benetti, as thunderingly-moustachioed a midfield as was ever conceived. The full-backs were Giacinto Facchetti and Berti Vogts, who apparently used to be a footballer before he became a Scottish figure of fun. Sweeper was Franz Beckenbauer, and alongside him, winning the ball for the Kaiser to use, Gorgon.
Keegan's own explanation for his choice isn't particularly illuminating. Where Beckenbauer gets four paragraphs, an anecdote, and a healthy dollop of awe -- "Beckenbauer is not normal; he could see, or perhaps sense, everything behind me" -- his notes on Gorgon's entry read, in their entirety:
Jerzy Gorgon of Poland is my centre-half. ‘A donkey' was Brian Clough's assessment, but I think that Gorgon copes most effectively with his technical limitations. He is a strong stopper with some skill and would balance with my sweeper, who is best partnered by a big man willing to attack the ball.
Faint praise, they call that. While many of the traditional pantheon of All Time Great central defenders -- see that list above -- were yet to come. Even looking for a man to play alongside a sweeper, it's an interesting call to pick the big Pole ahead of, say, Scirea's club partner Claudio Gentile. Even more intriguingly, it doesn't appear that Keegan ever played against Gorgon.
Michał Zachodny, co-editor of Ekstraklasa magazine, suspects that Gorgon's style -- "similar to English defenders of the time" -- may have played a part in Keegan's choice. "He was a hard-tackling, fine-heading, long-punting central defender with a good turn. Apparently his opponents were simply scared of him." Zachodny also points out that Gorgon bumped up against English opposition on two notable occasions: the aforementioned UEFA Cup final, and playing for Poland in qualification for the 1974 World Cup.
England were expected to qualify easily from a three-team group comprising the Poles and Wales, but the first game, away in Chorzow, ended 2-0 to Poland as Gorgon and company defended stoutly and took advantage of a sloppy performance from Bobby Moore. Then, for the notorious Wembley return, Moore was dropped by Alf Ramsey. The match itself, a 1-1 draw, is part of footballing folklore -- here's Brian Clough calling Jan Tomaszewski a clown, there's Norman Hunter giving the ball away for Poland's goal -- though the nostalgic clip shows tend to elide Martin Peters's post-match confession that England's equalising penalty might not have been wholly warranted. "He barely touched me but I went flying. I dived. It wasn't a penalty, but the referee didn't see it that way". He, of course, was Jerzy Gorgon, who later recalled:
Fans and players were screaming 'animals' at us and it could break few with not as strong mentality as ours. Even though we were knackered after game with Cardiff, they were kicking us much harder than the Welsh team. We knew what to expect though. After the game they didn't even want to shake our hands.
Those qualifying games occupy a deeply sensitive place in the collective memory of English football: it was the first time the national team had failed to qualify for the World Cup since they'd deigned to grace FIFA with their presence, and it was the end of both Moore and Alf Ramsey, icon and overseer of the 1966 triumph. Keegan had made his debut in first game against Wales (Wales 0-1 England, described by Ramsey as "Neither exciting nor entertaining") and also played in the second (1-1, England booed off at Wembley), but missed both matches against Poland. His book is sadly silent on whether he spent the time watching the games, or in a bingo hall in Darlington, but you can see why the defensive heart of the team might have made an impression.
Back to the question of the all-time best centre-back. It's odd that the recollections of footballers often vary from the wider, accepted pantheon. Gorgon isn't the only player along these lines to have been lauded by his certain of his peers but neglected by history. Pietro Vierchowod, an Italian defender of Ukrainian descent, was named by both Gary Lineker and Diego Maradona as their toughest opponent. Linker described him as "brutal and lightning quick", while Maradona said "He was an animal, he had muscles up to his eyelashes". Yet he's another name generally missing from the conversation.
Obviously, elite footballers have knowledge not available to mere mortals: professional expertise, personal respect (or contempt), understanding of what the whole business involves, and so on and so forth. Doing something gives you a perspective on that thing that outsiders don't have. This doesn't make their views necessarily better or right -- there's more to it than that, and there are plenty of thick footballers -- and it certainly doesn't justify Alan Shearer, Pundit-at-Large, but it does mean they may approach a question from a different angle and arrive at a different conclusion. That's why so much time is spent interviewing them: the hope of insight. An entertaining recent example of this was provided by Carlos Tevez, who was asked, as one of the few people have been teammates of both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, who he considered the best he'd played with. Paul Scholes, he replied.
Even more generally, we might perhaps acknowledge that the pantheon is perhaps not quite as rigorous as we might like to assume. Entry depends not just on talent, or even what a player does with that talent, but also where he does it, how he does it, who he does it with, and what notice everybody else takes. Fashions come and go, and players are lost to the tides of history. If a footballer wins a trophy in Poland in the 1970s, and only Kevin Keegan is watching, does he make a sound?
Maybe, in another universe, Jerzinho Gorgonzola's mound of domestic and international silverware sees him estimated alongside Beckenbauer by the world at large, not just by a former England striker trying to pad out his book. Maybe footballing greatness is, at heart, an uncertain exercise dominated by luck, circumstance, and imperfection to a far greater extent than those of us who like telling stories about it would ever care to admit. As Gorgon's international coach Kazimierz Górski put it: "You can play football for 20 years and play 1,000 times for the national team and nobody will remember you."
@mazhar13 @oneniltothearsenal don't forget to send me the tactics
Ferenc Bene
Bene was a Hungarian player who could play as right or central forward. He was a brilliant dribbler and equally good goal scorer, his goal against Brazil in 66 was mesmerizing -
Bene's brilliant goal against Brazil 66
Ferenc Bene, who operated mainly on the right attacking flank of that lovely free-flowing side, which also included the sharp-shooting János Farkas and the perceptive midfielder István Nagy.
Bene offered a compelling mixture of thrustful pace and nimble balance, deft skills and sensible composure in front of goal. Where Albert, three years his senior, tended towards the languidly artistic, Bene was ceaselessly dynamic, a dasher brimming with brio, and they complemented each other beautifully.
Having made a startling impact as a teenager with the powerful Budapest side, with whom he would embark eventually on a succession of rousing European campaigns, Bene was first called to his country's colours at the age of 17, to face Yugoslavia in 1962. But it was not until 1964 that he catapulted to international attention, helping the Magyars to take the bronze medal at the European Championships in Spain, then leading them to gold at the Tokyo Olympics, top-scoring with 12 goals, including this beauty in the 2-1 victory over Czechoslovakia in the final -
Bene goal in Olympic finals
Thus it was as a footballer of burgeoning status that the 21-year-old Bene arrived in England to contest the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1966, and he did not disappoint, finding the net in all of Hungary's four games.
After firing an equaliser and looking generally menacing in the opening defeat by Portugal, he shone in what many discerning judges declared to be the match of the tournament, a stirring 3-1 triumph over the holders, Brazil. Only three minutes into the action at Goodison Park, Bene dribbled at speed past several challenges before gulling the goalkeeper, Gylmar, with a clever near-post finish. The reigning champions equalised, but midway through the second period Albert and Bene combined in a slickly inventive manoeuvre to create a spectacular goal for Farkas.
Here is Bene's delightful cross from right wing for that goal
Now the Hungarians were rampant, truly reminsicent of their predecessors, the gloriously fluid Magnificent Magyars of the 1950s, who had twice humiliated England and changed the perception of all thinking men of the way that football might be played. Bene was fouled in the box, Kalman Meszöly converted from the spot, and the Goodison crowd rose in unison to this enchanting side, installing them as their favourites should England fall by the wayside.
The slick Bene - Albert combination that won the penalty
The Ujpest Dozsa marksman sparkled, and scored again, as Bulgaria were beaten in the final group match, and also he netted in the quarter-final against the USSR. But the Soviet battalions proved too tough for the skilful but less abrasive Hungarians, who yielded 2-1.
Bene composed finish against Yashin
Bene's country was never so strong again, but he continued to excel at club level, taking a prominent role as Ujpest piled up the domestic prizes. Altogether he pocketed medals for eight League championships and three national cup triumphs, headed the league's scoring charts five times and totalled 341 strikes in 487 competitive outings for the Lilac-and-Whites.
His international days continued until 1979, when he earned his 76th and final cap for Hungary, for whom he had notched 36 goals. By then the balding attacker, who had been voted his homeland's footballer of the year in 1969 and is in the top ten for both appearances and goals in the NB1 (first division), was beginning to wind down his playing days. Later he coached his beloved Ujpest and helped with the preparation of Hungary's under-21 team.
@harms
I have been kind enough so far but I'll remind you all of that rule. I will use it, if necessary. Please, send your formations and tactics in advance
@mazhar13
Sure thing. Will send my shizzle over to @harms later on.