As was his wont throughout his turbulent career, the deeply charismatic and innovative coach departed in fury. ![]() The board of directors rejected Guttmann’s continued demands for a pay rise, pointing to the absence of any such provision in his contract. Their final two goals were scored by Eusébio, the twenty-year-old phenomenon known as the ‘Black Pearl’.īut after the match, the club’s very realistic prospects of long-term European domination were thrown into disarray. In May 1962, Béla Guttmann’s Benfica had beaten the great Real Madrid 5–3 in the Olympic stadium in Amsterdam to claim their second successive European Cup. Kneeling beside the tombstone, he beseeched his dead mentor to lift a famous curse. There he prayed before the grave of the man who, three decades earlier, had plucked him from obscurity and propelled him to international stardom. Shortly before the game, Benfica’s greatest ever former player, Eusébio, took a trip to the Jewish section of the city’s Central Cemetery. To the memory of my parents and grandparents CONTENTSīéla Guttmann’s Career: Timeline and AchievementsĪt the Prater stadium in Vienna on, the illustrious Portuguese football team Benfica was due to take on Italian giants AC Milan in the European Cup Final. With dark forces rising once again, the story of Béla Guttmann s life asks the question: which vision of Europe will triumph in our times? Read more This remarkable story spans two visions of twentieth-century Europe: a continent ruptured by barbarism and genocide, yet lit up by exhilarating encounters in magnificent cities, where great players would strive to win football s holy grail. Rising from the death pits of Europe to become its champion in just over sixteen years, Guttmann performed the single greatest comeback in football history. But by 1961, as coach of Benfica, he had lifted one of football's greatest prizes: the European Cup a feat he repeated the following year. His father, sister and wider family perished at the hands of the Nazis. ![]() Having narrowly dodged death by hiding for months in an attic near Budapest as thousands of fellow Jews in the neighbourhood were dragged off to be murdered, Guttmann later escaped from a slave labour camp. More extraordinarily still, Guttmann was a Holocaust survivor. Longlisted for the Coutts Football Writers Association Award 2018.īefore Pep Guardiola and before José Mourinho, there was Béla Guttmann: the first superstar football coach, and the man who paved the way for the celebrated coaches of the modern age. ![]() Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2017.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |