The 23rd quadrennial FIFA World Cup hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada is now just ten weeks away. In preparation for the great sporting event, let’s take a look at some of the tournaments of the past. Last time, we covered the story of the first-ever FIFA World Cup in 1930, and now we bring you the story of the 1954 World Cup—a very painful event for Hungarians at the time, which only acquired its bittersweet taste for the nation over time.
The 1954 FIFA World Cup was hosted by Switzerland. As we wrote at the end of our previous piece about the 1930 tournament, all subsequent World Cups had qualification processes; it was no longer an open invitation to any team that wanted to take part.
However, that does not mean that the early World Cups had the same rigorous qualifier routes that we see today (which, for instance, had Italy trip over a wire for the third time in a row this year). Hungary’s 1954 campaign is a prime example of that.
They were drawn in a qualifying group with Poland and Iceland—just to have both of their opponents drop out. Thus, Hungary won a spot in the World Cup in Switzerland by default. The reason the two other teams withdrew was telling: they saw no realistic prospects in the group against the Mighty Magyars, the dominant team of the era.
Just how dominant were the Hungarian side at the time? They were the reigning Olympic Champions, having beaten Yugoslavia in the 1952 final in the men’s football event in Helsinki, Finland. At the time before the European Championships were introduced in the same years as the Summer Olympics, that title held a lot more prestige in football than today.
They also had not lost a single game since May 1950 (when Austria beat them 5–3 in Vienna), for over four years by the time the World Cup started. That unbeaten run included the famous 6–3 triumph over England at Wembley Stadium in 1953, known as ‘the Match of the Century’. In May 1954, just a month before the World Cup, England travelled to Budapest for a rematch, and got themselves an even bigger, 7–1 beating.
In another interesting tidbit, Spain missed out on qualification by a coin toss, after their play-off against Türkiye (which already served as a tie-breaker after the two teams finished level on points in the group) ended in a 2–2 draw after extra time.
Reigning world champions Uruguay were granted an automatic spot, and were generally regarded as the most formidable opposition to Hungary. The Hungarians, just like every other country in the Soviet bloc, did not even contest going to the World Cup four years prior. Brazil, after the national trauma of losing the 1950 World Cup title to their continental rivals on their own turf, won all four of their games in the South American round of qualification.
Thus, the final line-up of 16 teams arrived in Switzerland in June 1954 for the first televized World Cup (although live TV broadcasts were limited to Switzerland and nearby European countries).
The 16 teams were divided into four groups of four, with the top two advancing to the quarter-finals. This sounds very standard to a modern football fan thus far. However, there was a weird twist in the structure: each team only played two group games (excluding tie-breaking play-offs). Two powerseeded teams played the two non-seeded teams, and thus got to avoid playing their most prominent opponent in the group.
Hungary were in Group 2 with Türkiye, West Germany—spoiler alert: a team that will be important later—and South Korea. Since the Turkish took their qualifying opponents Spain’s power ranking, Hungary had to play South Korea and West Germany. They stepped over the first two obstacles with ease, as expected: with a 9–0 win over the Koreans and an 8–3 triumph over the Germans. However, it was not without a cost: Ferenc Puskás, the legendary inside left forward from Budapest Honvéd, the leader of the Mighty Magyars squad, suffered an ankle injury against West Germany. The Germans were the other team to advance from the four after beating Türkiye in a play-off.
In the other groups, Group 1 had an intense battle between Brazil, France, and Yugoslavia, with Mexico getting a front seat to observe as the fourth team. Eventually, Brazil and the Yugoslavas advanced, while France missed out by a point. In Group 3, defending champions Uruguay and Austria beat out Czechoslovakia and Scotland decisively; while in the all-European Group 4, England and hosts Switzerland advanced over Italy and Belgium.
In the quarter-finals, Switzerland and Austria played an insane match, which still stands as the highest-scoring game in FIFA World Cup history. The Swiss took a 3–0 lead by the 19th minute. However, despite playing in front of a Swiss crowd in scorching heat, the Austrians did not give up just yet. Spearheaded by a hat-trick from Theodor Wagner, a striker from SC Wacker Wien, they mounted a comeback for the ages. Austria ended up winning the game 7–5.
Hungary faced off against Brazil. The Brazilians really were not keen on letting another World Cup title slip through their hands. The ‘Battle of Bern’ is noted for its rough play, with both Brazil and Hungary not sparing each other with fouls. Ultimately, Hungary came out the victor of the battle, winning 4–2 with two goals from Sándor Kocsis, one from Nándor Hidegkuti, and a penalty converted by left-back Mihály Lantos.
In the other quarter-final games, West Germany beat out Yugoslavia, despite being considered the underdogs coming into the match-up; and Uruguay beat England 4–2.
Among the last four standing, Hungary played Uruguay in the most anticipated game of the tournament. It was a clash between the defending world champions and their most formidable challengers. Zoltán Czibor, the small, agile left-winger of Honvéd, gave the Hungarans the lead in the 13th minute, which was then doubled by Hidegkuti at the start of the second half. However, Peñarol’s Juan Hohberg levelled the score with a double, pushing the game into extra time. There, Kocsis (another Honvéd star) settled the affair, with two goals of his own, both of them being his signature headers. Kocsis ended up winning the Golden Boot of the tournament with a whopping 11 goals.
In the other bracket, a West Germany side that had already shown that they could defy expectations, faced Austria. While the Austrians were formidable opposition, they had to play four days after the draining 12-goal thriller against Switzerland, where they also lost their first-choice goalkeeper Kurt Schmied to a heat stroke he suffered in the unusually hot weather. The result: the Germans thrashed the Austrians 6–1, with two goals each from their captain Fritz Walter and Ottmar Walter.
In the third-place play-off, Austria beat Uruguay 3–1, which brings us to the game that cemented itself in history as the 'Miracle of Bern'.
If the Hungarians were the favourites coming into the tournament, it was even more the case ahead of the final against West Germany. The two sides had already met in the group stage, and Hungary easily won 8–3. Ferenc Puskás also got to return after healing from his injury.
And he got to work immediately, putting the Hungarians ahead by the 6th minute. Czibor too found the net just two minutes later—things were going exactly as expected at the start of the game, with Hungary up by two goals early on.
However, that is not how the game ended up transpiring. Max Morlock scored the first goal for the West Germans in the tenth minute. By the 18th minute, the score was level again, with Helmut Rahn putting away a corner at the far post. Gyula Grosics in the Hungarian goal was blamed by many for missing the cross with his punch, although he claimed he had been fouled for the rest of his life.
No more goals were scored for the rest of the half. Hungary were the more active side throughout the rest of the game (with Hidegkuti hitting the post and Kocsis hitting the crossbar), although the Germans had a couple of chances on the other end as well. Then, what most Hungarians thought was unimaginable happened in the 84th minute: Helmut Rahn gave the Germans the lead...
Puskás was able to answer quickly with a goal, but it was ruled out by an erroneous offside call. The 1954 World Cup final ended 3–2 to West Germany, giving the major European nation their first of—to date—four FIFA world champion titles. It meant more than a major sporting achievement for a nation that, less than ten years ago, had suffered its second loss in a world war—it was a licence to feel national pride again for the Germans.
As for Hungary, the people did not take the unexpected loss easily. In some cities, they even took to the streets to voice their discontent, something which was highly unusual and risky in the era of communist oppression, and which some historians view as a subdued prelude to the 1956 Budapest Revolution.
This was Hungary's second FIFA World Cup final appearance, with the first being in 1938 against Italy in Paris, France. They lost both finals, and have not returned to such prominence in the footballing world since. As decades passed, however, the Hungarian public grew to appreciate the sporting excellence of Ferenc Puskás and the rest of the Mighty Magyars. Those of the team who stayed or returned to Hungary were treated as national heroes at the end of their lives.
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