The world was asleep. Just once in a while, headlamps would throw their long, lonely beams across the bridge.
Ferenc Puskas stood there, lean¬ing against the hand-rail, watch¬ing the red and green lights of the boats on the river below.
Mist was lying over the water . and even the brilliance that was Berne by night, was reduced to a hazy, lazy glimmer.
Only the poor and the lonely walked the river banks on a night like this.
Yet this man standing on the bridge with the collar of his white, belted trenchcoat turned high was neither poor nor lonely.
He was, at this moment during the World Cup of 1954, the most famous footballer alive, captain of Hungary, possibly the greatest team the world had ever known .. .
The team that had gone through 50 consecutive internationals with only one defeat . . .
The team that had finally ended England’s 90 years of home dom-ination.
He was idolised by millions and yet, as so often happens when you reach the summit, there were others who looked at him with envious and jealous eyes.
He wondered what they’d say if they could see him now, filled with doubt and despair.
But no matter what anyone might think, tonight he needed desperately to be alone, to be able to think. Because his whole world was beginning to fall apart.
He had fallen out of love with his country. Since the Com¬munists had ridden to power, it had become a cold and a danger¬ous place for Puskas.
The Quisling Rakosi had be¬come an overlord to the Hungar¬ian team. And from that day forward, they had played against a background of secret police and intrigue . . . their private lives watched by Soviet-trained spies.
The sparkle had gone out of their game. Football was no longer fun.
Then there were the feuds within the team. Sandor Kocsis had quarelled violently with team manager Gustav Sebes. And Pus¬kas himself was at logger-heads with the two wingers, Laszlo Budai and Zolton Czibor.
The foundations of this soccer empire were beginning to crumble.
Yet there was no outward sign of this in the days that followed.
They massacred the South Koreans, 9—0, in the opening match and, three days later against Germany, there was pride in the eyes of Puskas as he watched his men file out on to the pitch behind him.
Out they came, each a giant in his own right. . . Kocsis the gipsy . . . the flying Czibor . . . Buxansky the miner . . . Boszik the politician with the Robert Taylor profile . . . Lantos . . . Zakarias . . . Lorant the card-player . . . Toth . . . the acrobatic Grosics and the deep- lying Hidegkuti.
They played like giants too and completely over-ran the very for midable German defence.
Inside forwards, Puskas and Kocsis, were in particularly devas-tating form.
The unfortunate Posipal had been detailed to mark the Hun¬garian captain and, for him, the game quickly became a nightmare.
Not once did he succeed in stopping Puskas and, in the second half, he switched places with the big, blond Liebrich.
Nothing was. changed. Puskas continued to play like a bird on the wing and the goals continued to come.
Liebrich, a desperate man now, was growing more rugged with every passing minute.
Puskas broke from the man’s grip and hit him on the jaw
Twice, he hammered Puskas down, long after the ball had gone.
With half-an-hour still to play, Hungary had scored five and looked likely to double the tally before the end.
It was then that disaster came.
Once again, Puskas broke clear on the halfway line and sped for goal. He slipped the perfect pass through to Kocsis and raced ahead for the expected return.
It was, at that moment, that Liebrich thundered into him. Puskas staggered, ran a few more yards and collapsed. He would play no more that day.
In fact, with his ankle badly injured, it was feared that he would be out of the entire com¬petition.
Hungary’s ten men added an-other three against the Germans to win 8—3 and bring their two match tally to seventeen.
Under such sweeping success, it was easy enough for Puskas to brush away the doubts that had haunted him for weeks.
But fate seemed determined to bring down the Hungarians.
First, there was this injury to their captain. Then came the game against the Brazilians that was to go down into history as the Battle of Berne.
Once again, the Hungarians made a wonderful start with two goals in seven minutes.
But from that moment on, the clash moved into the realm of gangsterdom. Amid scenes of great violence, two Brazilians and one Hungarian were sent off.
But this was only, so to speak, the hors d’oeuvre.
The Hungarians, eventual win-ners by 4—2, had just started to celebrate their vic¬tory back in the dressing-room when a soda-water syphon was thrown into their midst ... to explode like a minia¬ture bomb.
Next moment, the light bulb was smashed. More bottles sailed thro’ the doorway.
And with the room now in dark¬ness, the Brazilians came pouring in, swinging fists, feet, bottles and just about anything they could lay their hands on.
The battle raged for ten minutes, be-fore being broken up.
As the lights went on again, Toth was discov¬ered unconscious on the floor. Two players had been badly gashed about the head.
And everyone, it seemed, car¬ried some marks from this sudden, unexpected attack.
Once again, fate had a blow in store for the Hungarians. In the semi-final, they were drawn against the Uruguayans, next to them¬selves the most formidable team left in the competition.
In the other semi-final, the Germans were drawn against the relatively weak Austrians.
With the pressure building up, all the old feuds and petty squab¬bles within the Hungarian team were reborn.
And suddenly Puskas knew for sure that the old days were gone for ever. For him certainly, there could be no future in Hungary.
As a rebel, he had lived too high, wide and handsome . . . refused to conform to the iron regime Rakosi tried to impose upon the national team.
He remembered a night only a few brief weeks before. He had been drinking with friends in a Budapest night club when two of Rakosi’s men came to his table.
They had instructions to see that he returned home im¬mediately.
But when they had asked him to come with them to the man¬ager’s office for a quiet chat, Puskas . . . knowing perfectly well who they were . . . just smiled.
“We are among friends,” he said, “there is no need for secrets.”
One of them then put his hand on Puskas’s arm and began to half pull him out of his chair.
The smile had gone from the Hungarian captain’s face. Coming to his feet fast, he hit Rakosi’s man with a right swing and watched him skid across the floor on his back before ending up under the table.
A call went out to the local police station for reinforcements and, five minutes later, a captain of police walked in the club with two of his men.
The police captain was a curly wolf with huge shoulders and a reputation as a man-tamer and when he began to head towards Puskas’s table, the room became strangely silent.
But halfway across the floor, he recognised his quarry and, brush¬ing Rakosi’s man aside, greeted the Hungarian captain like a long- lost friend.
He refused point-blank to arrest him and departed after getting Puskas to sign a menu card for his small son.
That story was quickly laughed around the city and that very laughter, as Puskas well knew, had sealed his fate. He had been a marked man ever since.
It had also helped to split the team a little further. For they were not all, at that time, opposed to the regime.
The rift had never been wider than at this moment.
The Hungarians beat Uruguay in extra time, after a very hard, but fair game.
Puskas then declared himself fit to play in the final against Germany, a decision that caused considerable stir in the Hungarian ranks . . .
All the more so because Budai, the one most opposed to Puskas was the one who lost his place.
In the cold, clear light of day, the objections are hard to fathom.
Puskas, at that time, was almost certainly the most effective match- winner in the game. If fit, he just had to be played.
In addition to this, of course, he’d caused havoc in the German ranks the week before . . . and this fact alone was one of immense psychological value.
So it seemed. With the game only six minutes old, Boszik sent Kocsis through with a perfectly measured ground pass.
His shot was charged down, but Puskas coming in fast snapped up the rebound and rammed it home.
Two minutes later, Czibor scored another to put Hungary two-up with just nine minutes gone.
But Hungarian hopes were rudely shaken when Morlock scored in the twelfth minute.
Even more so when Rahn drove home a corner to level the scores.
For the first time, the Hun-garians seemed visibly worried. They swung back on to the attack, but the German rearguard was not to be stampeded today.
In terms of sheer brilliance, the skills, the arts and the graces, Hungary was still clearly the better team.
But World Cup finals aren’t won by such criterions alone. And it was when the two teams were judged on the wider issues of heart, passion and desire that Germany had the edge.
They were fighting as few teams had ever fought before.
The Hungarians, by contrast, were beginning to mutter amongst themselves.
Half-time came with the score, 2—2, and now the rain was falling in torrents.
Within the first half hour of the second half, Turek made two miraculous saves from Puskas.
And although territorially the game belonged to Hungry, it really came as no surprise when, with five minutes left, it was the Germans who broke the deadlock.
Rahn scored and it was with defeat staring him in the face that Puskas showed his true greatness.
Suddenly bursting through the German defence, he flashed the ball past Turek for what looked like a goal of pure Hungarian vintage.
But the linesman’s flag was up for off-side and the last drop of succour was dashed from Hun-garian lips.
And so Germany, the biggest underdogs in World Cup history, triumphed in the end.
For the Hungarians, it was the fall of an empire . . . and like most empires it had been brought down from within.