Celtic and the Miracle of Bern: Hogan, Stein, Puskás & Ange
The 1954 World Cup Final in Bern, Switzerland, was supposed to be the crowning moment of the great Hungarian football team of the era. Instead, defeat to West Germany signalled the beginning of the end of one of football’s greatest teams, lit the flames of revolution in Budapest, and sparked the imagination of a Scottish onlooker in the 62,500-strong crowd.
Some dates live long in the memory of football fans around the world. Key moments involving their clubs are etched into the backs of their minds and passed down through generations. The 25th of May 1967 is one such date in Celtic history - one that will live on long after all those associated with that magical day in Lisbon are dead and buried.
However, another date equally as important as the 25th of May 1967 has gone largely unnoticed in the annals of Celtic history. It is a date that does not directly involve Celtic, but it served as the inspiration for the greatest period in the club’s history.
On 4th July 1954, at the Wankdorf Stadium in Bern, Switzerland, tournament favourites Hungary took to the field against West Germany in the World Cup Final, looking to seal their place as one of the game's truly great sides.
Led by the great "Galloping Major," Ferenc Puskás, the Aranycsapat (which translates to the "Golden Team"), went into the final on the back of a four-year unbeaten run. Bizarrely, this run included an 8-3 victory against the West Germans in the group stage of the tournament itself - although the West Germans had rested a large number of players in that initial match.
Despite their dominance, Hungary lost the final 3-2, and with it, their last chance to date of becoming World Champions.
Revolution of ‘56
The fallout from the game back in Hungary went far beyond the natural disappointment of missing out on the World Cup trophy.
Mass demonstrations erupted on the streets of Budapest and around the country. These protests were aimed not only at the team for losing a game they were heavily favoured to win, but also at the Communist regime of Mátyás Rákosi.
Rákosi, like many politicians before and since, understood the importance of sporting success on the national psyche. He had ridden the wave of the Aranycsapat and the feel-good factor they brought to the Hungarian people. Now that the final was lost, the people - increasingly beleaguered and downtrodden - saw an opportunity to vent their frustrations at the establishment and took to the streets in protest.
In a further worrying turn of events, Aranycsapat goalkeeper Gyula Grosics was arrested by the Hungarian authorities in the aftermath of the final under suspicion of espionage. The famed goalkeeper was heavily blamed for conceding the third German goal.
Speaking in the years after the match, Grosics went so far as to suggest that the demonstrations laid the seeds and groundwork for the later, doomed uprising of 1956, which would ultimately see the Aranycsapat broken up for good.
The Revolution of ’56 lasted five months and ended with the Soviet Union re-asserting its control and authority over Hungary, plunging the country deeper into Communist rule until the fall of the Soviet Bloc in 1989.
From a purely football perspective, the great Budapest Honvéd side of the 1950s was left in exile in Europe at the start of the revolution. After playing the second leg of their European Cup tie against Athletic Bilbao, the players and management refused to return home, embarking on the Honvéd World Tour to raise funds instead.
Puskás, Sándor Kocsis, Zoltán Czibor, and the aforementioned Gyula Grosics all refused to return. With their exile fell the greatest international side never to win a World Cup.
An Interested Spectator
While the game dubbed the "Miracle of Bern" may have felt like a nightmare for the Hungarians, for one interested spectator and student of the game in attendance, it was the beginning of something pure, beautiful, and inventive.
Among the 62,500 people crammed into the Wankdorf Stadium on that balmy day in July was a 31-year-old Jock Stein - the man who would later guide Celtic to their greatest ever achievement.
Stein’s attendance at the final was due to a rare moment of generosity from the Celtic board, who had decided to reward their 1953/54 League and Cup double-winning squad with a trip to the 1954 World Cup. Ever the football student, Stein focused his attention on the Hungarians, a team he had also been fortunate enough to see dismantle England 6-3 at Wembley the year before.
The impact of the Hungarian performances and style of play - both at the "Match of the Century" at Wembley and the 1954 World Cup - left a lasting impression on Stein and his assistant, Sean Fallon. The latter noted in his autobiography: "The Hungarians changed everything, both in terms of their system and the way they played the game. It was all about skill on the ball and movement off the ball… That Hungary team, they were special. We could have sat and watched them all day."
These sentiments were echoed by many who were fortunate enough to watch Stein’s Lisbon Lions in full flow in the years to come.
Where Puskás and the Aranycsapat fell at the final hurdle, Stein - who also incorporated elements from the great Brazilian and Real Madrid teams into his footballing philosophy - went one better.
A display of attacking football, full of courage and bravery, blew away a stuffy and defensive Inter Milan in the Lisbon heat as Celtic became the first non-Latin side to win the European Cup. With 41 efforts on goal, Celtic dominated the final in a way the Hungarians could only have dreamed of doing in their own final 13 years earlier.
Jimmy Hogan
But while Stein and Fallon may have drawn their inspiration for the Lisbon Lions from the free-flowing Hungarian side, the mastermind behind the Aranycsapat was a man not entirely unfamiliar to Celtic Park.
Arriving at Parkhead in 1948, Jimmy Hogan brought with him a wealth of experience from over two decades of coaching on the continent.
Hailing from Burnley, Hogan had begun his coaching career in the Netherlands as far back as 1910. After a brief spell coaching in Austria, Hogan was interned as a prisoner of war at the outbreak of World War I. He was later smuggled across the border into neighbouring Hungary, where he became the head coach of MTK Budapest between 1914 and 1918.
Hogan won four successive league titles with MTK, setting the club on its way to a ten-in-a-row title-winning streak and leaving a lasting impression on Hungarian football before departing for spells in Germany and Switzerland, where he coached the national team.
After a second two-year stint with MTK, Hogan returned to Austria where he assisted Hugo Meisl in developing the Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s - a side revered for its quick passing style and the goal-scoring prowess of the inspirational Matthias Sindelar.
By the time Hogan arrived at Celtic in 1948, the club was in decline and in need of outside inspiration to turn its fortunes around.
Hogan implemented innovative and original training practices at Celtic Park that focused on ball work and practising in-game scenarios. He promoted a fast-paced, attacking, pass-and-move game, and even took a keen interest in the players' diets. While this is all standard practice now across all levels of the game, in 1948 Hogan’s approach was revolutionary and, initially, sneered at.
One of the Celtic players to benefit, albeit briefly, from Hogan’s tutelage was Sean Fallon, who would help instil the English pioneer’s philosophy into Jock Stein in the years after Hogan left Celtic to return down south.
In Hungary, the mere mention of Jimmy Hogan's name still brings a smile to the face of football people:
"Jimmy Hogan taught us everything we know about football." - Gusztáv Sebes, coach of the Aranycsapat.
Football Cycles
The development of Hungarian football and the attacking style of the Aranycsapat - with players switching positions in-game on a regular basis becoming a feature of play for the first time, long before the Dutch "invention" of Total Football - was largely due to the influence of Jimmy Hogan.
Hogan’s views on the game from the 1930s and '40s were picked up and developed further by Gusztáv Sebes in the '50s with the Hungarian national team. In turn, Jock Stein built on those foundations, evolving the Lisbon Lions from eleven Glaswegians into Champions of Europe.
Another disciple of Hogan’s attacking philosophy was the Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskás. At the end of his esteemed playing career, Puskás ventured into management and adopted the same attacking principles of his mentors, Hogan and Sebes. In 1971, Puskás guided his Panathinaikos side to the European Cup Final, only to lose to Johan Cruyff’s Ajax. To this day, Puskás’ Panathinaikos remains the only Greek side to compete in a European Cup final.
After leaving Greece in 1974, Puskás embarked on a nomadic coaching career across Europe and South America, before ultimately landing in Australia as head coach of South Melbourne Hellas. Hellas, a club founded by Greek immigrants, welcomed Puskás with open arms, remembering his achievements in putting Panathinaikos on the European map.
Among his playing staff at Hellas was a young full-back named Angelos "Ange" Postecoglou, the son of a Greek immigrant and a future Celtic manager. Inspired by Puskás’ approach to the game - and his philosophy that all-out attack is the best form of defence - Postecoglou adapted Puskás’ rigid 4-3-3 into a more flexible system of his own as he took his first strides into management.
Those strides eventually took the Australian to Japan before he embarked on a highly successful two-year stint in Glasgow’s East End. Following in the footsteps of Hogan, Sebes, Puskás, and Stein, Postecoglou brought a style of play back to Celtic Park that had gone missing during the ill-fated Covid season.
Now, as Celtic prepare to face Hungarian opposition once again, the Hoops' style of play has lost some of that attacking flair and creativity. The dynamic pass-and-move football that the club is synonymous with has been replaced by an almost robotic, play-by-numbers approach. Blowing sides away has been replaced by simply getting the job done.
I wonder what Jimmy Hogan would make of that. Perhaps on Thursday night, he would be like the rest of us - simply happy with a Celtic win by any means necessary.
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