The Galloping Major Rests – sleep well
By Boris Mellor
November 20 2006
Ferenc Puskas died this morning at the age of 79. In the late 1950s and up to the mid 1960s, and perhaps even beyond, every schoolboy wanted to play like Ferenc Puskas.
Grown Englishmen talked in hushed tones of the Magical Magyars who defeated England 6-3 at Wembley in 1953, and 7-1 in the Budapest return. English football took a reality check from which it has barely ever recovered. Puskas scored twice in that Wembley rout. Puskas Captain of Hungary, my father used to say that name in such a respectful way that I grew up thinking it was his full name. It wasn’t until later that I discovered his first name was Ferenc and not Puskas.
Personalised Arsenal Greetings Cards and Posters, an ideal Christmas gift for any Arsenal fan! Click the link below, select one of our stunning photos from Getty Images and write your own personal greeting. We print your cards as though you'd bought them in a shop, and mail them for you, to anywhere in the world. You can order one card or why not do a whole bunch for all your family and friends? Click here
It’s a pity that time erodes memory so quickly, very few ever list Puskas as their greatest ever European footballer, and surely he must have been one of the greatest players never to win the World Cup. He scored an early goal and had another disallowed in the final minute of the 1954 final, which would have sent the game to extra time. His Hungarian career was wrecked by the Soviet invasion, he refused to return to Hungary. UEFA’s response was to ban him from international football. They always were crap; you can’t always blame Sky. However winning the European Cup three times with Real Madrid must have been some consolation. His partnership with Di Stefano was dynamite.
Was Puskas the greatest European footballer ever? I think so, but let the figures do the talking he scored 83 goals in 84 games for Hungary from 1945 to 1956. He scored four goals in Real's 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the incredible final at Hampden Park in 1960. He scored 512 goals for Real in 528 matches. He was voted the 20th century's sixth best player by the International Federation for Football History and Statistics. The other five must have been really good.
This should not be a time of sadness, but an opportunity to rekindle the memories of Puskas and the wonderful football he promoted. One such memory was given by George Best who recounted taking part in a training academy for youth in Australia. In the far distance he could see a portly, balding middle age man being teased by youth players. He was trying to coach them, and they wouldn’t listen. So he put the ball on the spot and gestured to one of them to go in the goal, they carried on laughing at him as the keeper prepared for an easy save. The ball was curled in, left side, right side, top, bottom, middle, every one went in. They changed keepers, still the ball went in. The laughing stopped, and the mood changed to one of awe. Best was spell bound, he made his way to the far end to see who this man was. It was Ferenc Puskas, the Galloping Major, named after the fact his first team was an army side.
He was one of the very first European Super Stars, not just known in own country but worldwide. The word super star is often applied too lightly, and devalued by overuse, in Puskas’s case it just doesn’t do justice.