Fiasco:

Two months is a long time in football. During the qualification campaign Fabio Capello could do no wrong. The manager credited with instilling a winning mentality into players pampered by Steve McClaren made tactical mistakes and worse in South Africa. He just about clung on to his job after a humiliating 4-1 thrashing by Germany – Frank Lampard’s ignored goal aside.

Capello wielded the axe for his first squad to play Hungary this evening. Only ten members of the World Cup flops squad survived the cull, but two players handed call ups by Capello took ‘revenge’ on the Italian for leaving them out of the World Cup squad. Blackburn Rovers goalkeeper Paul Robinson and Manchester United defender Wes Brown waited until selected by Capello for this squad to announce their international retirement. Meanwhile, Darren Bent, is nursing a back injury and seems intent on not playing despite his call-up.

The reception given to England failures at Wembley on Sunday suggests that they can expect a torrid reception from the crowd. Capello will fare no better, especially after his admission that the players have a mental problem that he does not know how to fix. Friendly or not there may not be a better time to play England for opponents that have a rich footballing history against them.

The Greatest:

57 years ago an unfancied Hungarian team inspired by a seemingly overweight inside-forward with perhaps the best left foot ever shook England out of their complacency. English players had the audacity to laugh at Ferenc Puskás before that match. After he had helped give them a football lesson, nobody dared to under-estimate the Magnificent Magyars again.

Puskás scored an incredible 83 goals in 84 matches for Hungary before joining Real Madrid when in his thirties. Italian football thought he was finished and missed the opportunity to sign him. It was Spain’s gain as he scored 35 goals in 39 European Cup matches – not bad for a one-footed player!

That Hungarian side wasn’t just good – they were superb. In my opinion they were clearly the best team never to win the World Cup. Brasil in 1982 were very pleasing on the eye, but they came nowhere near winning. They lost in the second round, not semi-final or final. That should exclude them from even being considered, especially against the Dutch teams of 1974 and 78 and the Hungarians, which were considerably better. Both Dutch teams reached the final, but the Hungarians shade it for their achievements on route.

Until their surprise defeat to West Germany in the final in 1954 – a team they had dismantled 8-3 in the group stage – the Magnificent Magyars had been unbeaten for four years, during which they compiled an incredible run of 32 matches without defeat and an Olympic title. Even recovering from injury Puskás was a potent threat. The officiating was scandalous and allgations of doping persist even now.

Hungary took an early 2-0 lead. Legendary goalkeeper was poised to easily catch Fritz Walter’s corner, but was blatantly obstructed by Hans Schäfer, which allowed Helmut Rahn to equalise. Having gifted the West Germans an equaliser they did not deserve, English referee William Ling conspired to deny the Magnificent Magyars an equaliser they did deserve with just three minutes remaining – a decision that robbed the Hungarians of the title they deserved.

Ling had correctly given the goal, scored by Puskás, but was persuaded by Welsh linesman Benjamin Mervyn Griffiths after a consultation to disallow it. Had it been allowed then technology could have resolved far greater injustices than Lampard’s goal that was not given.

During their superb unbeaten run they didn’t just beat England 6-3 at Wembley on November 25th 1953, they offered them a chance to restore honour in Budapest a few months later and dismantled them again. The Magyars were even more magnificent than at Wembley, destroying the English 7-1. The great Tom Finney was a spectator at Wembly, watching in awe, wondering what England had been doing until then. In Bupadest he was a spectator on the pitch.

But the signs of greatness were clear at least a year earlier. They did not win the World Cup that their talent deserved, but the team that turned conventional football wisdom on its head convincingly won Olympic gold in Helsinki in 1952, which impressed Stanley Rous enough to invite the Hungarians to Wembley. The gold medalists included Grosics: Puskás, Nándor Hidegkuti, Sándor Kocsis, József Bozsic and Zoltán Czibor, among others.

The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 destroyed the Magnificent Magyars as some players, including the great Ferenc Puskás, who was then in Spain with his team defected. Hidegkuti stayed in Hungary. Kocsis’ eleven goals in a World Cup finals was bettered four years later by Just Fontaine, but Kocsis remains second only to Fontaine. The Magnificent Magyars remain one of the greatest teams ever to play the beautiful game.