ArFootballHistory

Author: Cristóbal Giraldo. Uploaded 10/2/24

Sarosi made his official debut on the international stage in 1932, in the Mitropa Cup. And he does it with a bang: he plays as a centre-half, the role in which he took his first steps in the world of football, and scores a hat-trick, all goals from penalties. Despite the anger over the three eleven-meter shots awarded against the Italians, Carlo Carcano, Juventus coach, at the end of the match defined the rising star of Hungarian football with one word: “Extraordinary”. And it is precisely in this period that György Orth, former Hungarian champion and Sarosi’s idol, notices him and exclaims the phrase: “I have found my successor”.

In 1934 Sarosi was moved from centre-half to centre-forward. It is a brilliant intuition and the fruits can be seen immediately: between 1 and 2 April, the Easter Cup will be held in Budapest. Ferencvaros, Hungaria – provisional name of MTK -, Rapid Vienna and Austria Vienna participate. The matches that the Green and Whites play against their Austrian rivals give the following results: 6-2 and 9-5. Sarosi is the author of 9 total goals. And only a month later, nineteen years before Puskas’ Hungary won over England, Hungary beat the English 2-1. Sarosi enters the scoreboard in the 69th minute with a great goal into the top corner. Over the years he would have established himself as top scorer in any competition in which he took part except the World Cup, in which he would still have scored in every single match played. Then it’s time for the World Cup, a bitter World Cup for the Magyars. Sarosi missed the victorious debut against Egypt but was on the field in the quarterfinals in the Danube derby against Austria. He scores a penalty but it’s not enough: Austria wins 2-1 and qualifies for the semi-finals.

1935 and 1936 were not exciting years from the point of view of results: in 1935 Fradi only won one Hungarian cup. Sarosi is Mitropa’s top scorer but the double final against Sparta smiles on the Czechoslovakians. 1936 was an even more anonymous year: the Biancoverdi finished third in the championship and took part in the Mitropa only because the competition was expanded to four teams per federation. Even in a year like this, Sarosi, with 36 goals, became the top scorer in the Hungarian championship.

1937 was a bittersweet year for Sarosi: Ferencvaros, or Fradi, as it is still called by its fans, lost the championship by one point against rivals Hungaria despite the Biancoverdi having the most prolific attack of the tournament . The credit goes largely to two players, two flags of the club: Geza Toldi, a striker with enormous potential partly limited by his bad temper and, indeed, Gyorgy Sarosi, who concludes the review with 29 goals scored. But in the Mitropa Cup Sarosi and his teammates take their revenge. There are 12 times that the Hungarian public explodes with joy shouting Gyurka! Gyurka! Sarosi, moreover, graduated in law that year, becoming Dr. Sarosi for everyone. Dr. Sarosi scored the best – and most important – goals in the final, against the unfortunate Lazio, a team that was making its debut on the international stage that year and in which the star of striker Silvio Piola shone. In the first match Sarosi outweighs three opponents before scoring and in the return match, played in Rome, he scores three goals, the last of which is undoubtedly the most memorable: he collects a cross from the right from a teammate, Tancos , and with a spectacular overhead kick he puts the ball into the far post, leaving the Italian crowd and goalkeeper petrified. Due to the bad weather, Sarosi and his teammates would have celebrated that feat smeared in mud and at the end of the match Sarosi would have said: “How unfortunate! I couldn’t see one of my best goals because my back was turned.” Wuthrich, the referee of the match, called him the best player and strategist in the world.

The International Cup, a forerunner of today’s European Championships, was also played between the two finals. Hungary had beaten Czechoslovakia 8-3 and Sarosi had inflicted seven goals on the legendary Bohemian goalkeeper Planicka. It is a record that has survived to this day.

Although the player will confirm his state of grace also in the following season, Sarosi will see the possibility of winning the treble vanish by a matter of millimeters: Ferencvaros, who had already achieved a treble in 1928, wins the championship but has to surrender in the final by Mitropa – Sarosi scores three times in the semi-final against Juventus – against Slavia and in the World Cup against Italy. The realization that Gyurka will score from the spot is of no avail. Silvio Piola, scorer of a brace that day, takes revenge for the previous year’s defeat.

1939 marks the consecration of Hungarian football. If the year before Hungary achieved a second place in the World Cup, in 1939 the European final was a derby: Mitropa pitted two teams from Budapest, Ferencvaros and Ujpest, coached by the well-known coach Bela Guttmann, against each other. at the time on the launch pad. Fradi against Ujpest also means or perhaps above all Sarosi against Zsengeller, the two main faces of Hungarian football. Zsengeller, nicknamed Abel, the name of the protagonist of some novels by his favorite author, Tamasi, is an authentic goal machine: his 56 goals in 26 league games allowed Ujpest to win the scudetto and if Ujpest arrives Mitropa Zsengeller had some merit in the final, given that in the second leg of the semi-final against Beogradski she scored a very powerful victory, thus avoiding an unexpected elimination for Guttmann and his team. Guttmann, who had jokingly told journalists that if Beogradski won he would stop coaching, had thanked them. And he would have been even more grateful a few days later, given that in the first leg Abel would have scored twice more. The final score was 1-4, a result that the second leg would not have overturned. Sarosi and his companions, for the second consecutive year, saw the European dream shattered at the last minute.

In 1940 Hungarian football experienced a critical phase. The war is ongoing and patriotic and nationalist rhetoric is raging throughout the country. Football, consequently, pays its price but despite everything the championship ends regularly. Fradi are champions and Sarosi is top scorer. The Mitropa Cup seems to be more within reach than ever, since due to the conflict the Italian teams have withdrawn and the Austrian ones, in fact, do not exist: it has no longer existed since March 1938, when Adolf Hitler’s troops invaded Vienna. And in fact Dr. Sarosi collects his fourth consecutive final: in the quarter-finals the Green-Whites inflicted an 11-1 defeat on Sarajevo’s Slavia and Sarosi scored five times, while in the semi-final the Hungarians defeated OFK Beograd by virtue of the return match. Sarosi went to the net again. The final between Ferencvaros and Rapid Bucharest, however, will never be played: the Hungarian government had been making territorial claims on Romanian territory for months and a few months later the Magyar troops would have invaded northern Transylvania. Sarosi thus missed the fourth final for the fourth consecutive year. Despite this, Sarosi remains the top scorer of what was the pre-war Champions Cup.

Sarosi is often referred to as a total, or at least universal, player. Silvio Piola, who had faced him on more than one occasion, once praised his ability to play splendidly in any position. In reality, as we have seen, Sarosi played almost his entire career as a striker except for his beginnings as a centre-half. There he found his place despite his interpretation of the role being quite new: he moved across the entire attacking front and thanks to his first-rate technical, athletic and physical skills he managed to score in every way: from outside the area , in acrobatics, following a serpentine or as a pure attacker. He was not the only center forward of the time to break away from the logic of the English centre-half: the Austrian Matthias Sindelar was known to everyone for his dribbling and ability to send his teammates towards goal, while the Italian Meazza stood out for his speed and his individual virtuosity. In terms of total footballer, however, the only one who could be compared to Sarosi was Raymond Braine. Braine was the first Belgian professional player, a symbol of Sparta known for his flexibility. For many, these two are the main predecessors of the total player par excellence, Alfredo Di Stefano.

Sárosi was a Hungarian footballer, between the ages of 30 and 40. He could play in all the central positions of the pitch, i.e. as a defender, midfielder and striker. He had a lot of class with the ball on his feet, with which he could hit the ball played with a lot of elegance. She had a great vision of the game, with which she started with clarity and gave assistance with ease, characteristics that combined with her physique and her defensive qualities, allowed her to be able to play without problems in the center of the field. But where the best surprise was on the back. Playing in the center, you play with your Antojo, racing with ease and speed to the defenses. He would continue to play on the road in the Ferencvaros, from 1930 to 1948. He would debut at the age of 18, in the central defense post. In this case he joined as an indisputable titleholder, until all his potential and talent were gained, placing him primarily as a midfielder and later as a striker. How later he would convert, not only to the great star of the Budapest club, up to the top star of Hungary. And no matter what, it would be linked to being one of the best players in the world. It would help the Verdiblancos to win the Liga de Hungría of 1932, 1934, 1938, 1940 and 1941 and the Copa de Hungría of 1933, 1942, 1943 and 1944. But above all they would win with the Copa Mitropa (the most prestigious cup of that era, which was a kind of European Cup, but with the countries of Central Europe, but Italy) of 1937, ending in the semi-final, to Mathias Sindelar’s Austria Vienna and in the final to a double match, to Silvio Piola’s Lazio . Nadie can surpass Sarosi’s goalscoring record in the Copa Mitropa. With the selection of Hungría they would play in the World Cup in 1934, where they would reach the final stages, where they would come before the Austria of Sindelar. In the 1938 World Cup, where the magyares achieved a splendid tournament, being second to lose in the final, against the Italy of Giuseppe Meazza and Silvio Piola, coached by Vittorio Pozzo. In this championship, the “Doctor” Sarosi was one of the great stars, being included in the tournament and winning the Bronze Ball (between Leonidas and Silvio Piola) and the bronze ball.