Béla Guttmann

Club career

Guttmann was a prominent member of the MTK Hungária team of the early 1920s. Playing halfback or center half alongside Gyula Mándi, he helped MTK win Hungarian League titles in 1920 and 1921.

In 1922, Guttmann moved to Vienna, Austria, to escape the antisemitism in Hungary of the Admiral Horthy regime, as during 1919 to 1921 counter-revolutionary soldiers carried out repressive violence to destroy any supporters of Hungary's short-lived Soviet republic and its Red Terror. Several hundreds of people were killed, many of them were Jewish in a campaign known as the White Terror, orchestrated by the Hungarian nationalist government. In Vienna he joined the all-Jewish club Hakoah Wien and played for them as their centre back from 1922 to 1926 and in 1933. For the team's shirts, they wore the blue and white of the Zionist national movement, and a large Star of David was their badge. In 1925, he won another league title when Hakoah won the Austrian League. In April 1926, the Hakoah Wien squad sailed to New York to begin a ten-match tour of the United States. On 1 May, a crowd of 46,000 watched them play an American Soccer League XI at the Polo Grounds, a US record for a soccer game until 1977. The ASL team won 3–0. At least six of the Hakoah players were later killed in the Holocaust. Following the tour Guttmann, who was Hakoah's most prominent player, and several of his teammates decided to stay on in the US. After initially playing for Brooklyn Wanderers, he…

Guttmann coached two dozen teams in ten countries, from 1933 to 1974, and won two European Cups, and ten national championships. He also coached the national teams of Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Brazil, Uruguay, and Portugal. As a coach, tactically he pioneered the 4–2–4 formation, and had his teams play fearless attacking football. In addition, he required that his players follow his regime of diet, rigorous fitness, and hard training.

Return to Europe; Nazi forced labor camp

Guttmann returned to Europe in 1932 and in the years before the outbreak of the Second World War he coached teams in Austria, The Netherlands, and Hungary. He had spells with his former club Hakoah Wien, and then Dutch side Enschede. He then had his first serious success with Újpest in the 1938–39 season, winning the Hungarian League and the Mitropa Cup (the precursor to the European Cup). Shortly thereafter, anti-Jewish laws introduced by the Hungarian government ensured Guttmann lost his job. During the destruction of Hungarian Jewry, after the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944 and sent most of Hungary's Jews to Nazi concentration camps where they were killed, Guttmann initially hid in an attic in Újpest, aided by his non-Jewish brother-in-law. He was then sent to a Nazi forced labor camp near Budapest, where he was tortured. Years later, he reminisced: "Our sergeant ... [had] learned how to torture people... Was I a footballer from the national team, was I a successful…

Guttmann was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, and was Jewish. His parents, Ábrahám and Eszter were dance teachers. He became a trained dance instructor himself, at 16 years of age. He obtained a Psychology degree in Austria.

Player

MTK Hungária

Hungarian League: 1919–20, 1920–21 Hakoah Wien

Austrian Champions: 1924–25 New York Hakoah

National Challenge Cup: 1929

Manager

Újpest/Újpesti

Hungarian League: 1938–39, 1946–47 Mitropa Cup: 1939 São Paulo

São Paulo State Champions: 1957 Porto

Portuguese Liga: 1958–59 Benfica

European Cup: 1960–61, 1961–62 Primeira Divisão: 1959–60, 1960–61 Taça de Portugal: 1961–62 Intercontinental Cup runner-up: 1961 Peñarol

Uruguayan Championship: 1962 Copa Libertadores runner-up: 1962

Individual

World Soccer 9th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2013 ESPN 16th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2013 France Football 20th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2019 Deutsche Presse-Agentur 3rd Greatest Eastern European Manager of the 20th Century: 1999