Two world-famous players of the Golden Team were childhood friends who grew up in the same neighbourhood.
“It is time to say it clearly: József Bozsik was one of the best footballers in the world, one of the world’s finest half-backs, playing in what was then the best club team, Honvéd, and the best national team in the world,” was stated on 2 December at a small ceremony in Budapest, where the statue of József Bozsik—born one hundred years ago—was unveiled.
Bozsik was a member of the same legendary Golden Team as Ferenc Puskás. What’s more, the two world-class players lived next door to each other and played football together on the local makeshift pitch in Kispest.
Unlike Puskás, however, he did not leave the country, even though after the 1956 revolution he too received an offer during a foreign tour.
Bozsik became an Olympic champion in 1952, won a World Cup silver medal in 1954, and in November 1953 he played—and even scored—in the “Match of the Century,” when the Hungarian national team beat England 6–3 at Wembley Stadium in London.
He died in 1978. He was the first person to have a stadium named after him, and it is there that his statue has now been erected. (The stadium is located on Ferenc Puskás Street, incidentally.)
Naturally, Ferenc Puskás also has a statue in Budapest. The artwork was unveiled in 2013 on Puskás Öcsi Square in Óbuda, depicting Puskás in a suit juggling a football while local children from Madrid watch him.
