On 25 November 1953, a match was played at Wembley Stadium which would change the course of football history. On a magnificent unbeaten streak of 24 games, the Hungary team known as the Mighty Magyars stepped out onto the pitch and proceeded to annihilate a supposedly invulnerable England side. The Hungarians triumphed 6-3 on the day, with the likes of Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis and Nándor Hidegkuti methodically dismantling their opponents, despite the presence of England legends like Billy Wright, Stanley Matthews and future manager Alf Ramsey in their starting line up. The fixture would become known as the 'Match of the Century', dubbed as such by the English press after a humbling and unexpected loss to a manifestly superior national team.While the raw talent of the Hungary squad was no doubt a decisive factor in the encounter, equally important was the tactical innovation which allowed that talent to flourish and thrive. Much of that innovation came from the mind of Gusztáv Sebes, the head coach of the Hungary national team and the country's Deputy Minister for Sport. Born the son of a cobbler in Budapest and a trade union organiser in his younger years, Sebes was a committed socialist who believed his ideology could be applied to football. In the early post-war period, his political outlook made him a suitable managerial candidate as far as the communist authorities were concerned, and so having originally headed a three-man committee he was rapidly promoted to sole charge of the side.Playing a self-professed brand of socialist football with a focus on mutual cooperation, Hungary came to be one of the greatest teams the game has ever seen, as they showed that November when they trounced England on Wembley's hallowed turf. While England shaped up in their usual, dated 'WM' formation, maintaining a rigid shape based on the predominant tactical consensus of the past few decades, Sebes' men formed up in a 4-2-4 with interchangeable and fluid positions on the pitch. Sebes' theory was that each player should be able to fill in elsewhere as well as carrying out his own positional responsibilities, with the team thinking as a collective as opposed to a group of individuals with distinct duties. Meanwhile, he pioneered a whole new set of positions, with Nándor Hidegkuti acting as his deep-lying forward, Ferenc Puskás a nascent midfield playmaker, overlapping full-backs who could double up as wingers and an incipient sweeper in front of a neoteric back four.Read more on VICE Sports.
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