‘Erbstein: The triumph and tragedy of football’s forgotten pioneer’

Many might not like it but sport will always find itself linked to politics, not just how sport and in particular football are run but linked with national and international politics.

Here in England during the 70’s the Far Right used football as a way to recruit members and 40 years later the EDL and other Far Right groups have attempted to repeat that feat whilst Cameron like Blair have been quick to declare their love for the game and ready for the quick ball juggling photo shoot.

In Europe and closer to home in Scotland and Northern Ireland, nationalist, sectarian and political groups have aligned themselves with football clubs as a shared identity has often seen to be beneficial for both sides.

If anything in England we have been fortunate that no football clubs have ever found themselves linked with any political group, even if politicians have been involved with the clubs (Notts County, Coventy and Chelsea as examples).

But from the birth of football in the late 19th and early 20th Century, football teams in Europe have been linked far closer to political groups and movements, with many of those clubs toady still associated with the same groups, this is particularly so in Italy and Spain. Central European clubs have also had their political links, but after 1945 all were linked to various arms of the communist structure, some of those clubs today still have left leanings (as in Berlin) where others have since found themselves adopted by Far Right and Nationalist groups.

But football can also help in breaking down barriers, with war waging in Ukraine, football still continues with people still working hard to keep the clubs from the breakaway region of the Crimea in the Ukrainian Football League.

But by studying football in the 20th Century we can also increase our knowledge of European history and after (that long) preamble it brings me to the subject of this post, a review of one of the best football books I have read and a book that is as much about European history as it is about the beautiful game.

The book is ‘Erbstein: The triumph and tragedy of football’s forgotten pioneer’

Erbstein was a Hungarian footballer, one who seemed to make up for his lack of skill and finesse by his hard tackling (dirty) style of play but where he may not have been the greatest player in terms of skill it was soon noticed that he was an outstanding leader. Hungary would become one of the greatest teams ever seen in the 1950’s but even before World War 2, Hungarian football was a leading player with a new style of play coming from Austria/Hungary – ‘Danubian Football’.

His leadership came to the fore, not in Hungarian League football but with a touring Jewish side to the USA, Erbstein was a leading member of the ‘Maccabees’ as the Jewish tourists became known.

The team was part of a Zionist movement that wanted to show a different side to being Jewish, as anti-Semitism spread across both Europe and the US.

The tour to the US proved that Erbstein was not only a great leader but also a coach with much potential and it was to Italy the Hungarian went to use these skills.

More worryingly for me the book documents the many political upheavals happening in Europe at that time and you can see similarities with the way Europe is today, from Italy passing legislation that only Italian players could play for Italian teams, the movement of towns and regions between countries as some and more disturbingly the need to blame a minority for the financial trouble many found themselves in.

I could write for ages about this great book but I would rather you discovered that for yourself by reading it, but we find Erbstein in Turin and starting to create a great team to rival their city rivals, Juventas and the two Milan teams, but the rise of fascism leads to Erbstein attempting to escape to Holland with his family but captured by the Germans but he then uses his football contacts (and diamonds) to gain a passage back to Hungary but eventually even there he ends up on the run from the Nazis.

Erbstein and his close family survive the holocaust and after the war he returns to Turin to take the ‘technical director’ role at Torino where he becomes the architect of the ‘Grande Torino’ the greatest football team in the world at the time, a winning run of Italian League titles, providing all 10 outfield players for the Italian national side for a game v Hungary and a team that was invited to travel all other the world to play in prestigious friendlies.

It was on the return to Turin from one of these trips (to Lisbon) that ‘Grande Torino’ lost their lives in a plane crash above the city.

So if you buy one football book this year make it this one –

‘Erbstein : The triumph and tragedy of football’s forgotten pioneer’ by Dominic Bliss, from Blizzard - £10 – www.blizzard.co.uk

Terror from both Right and Left - Budapest remembers

Last week I was in Budapest and visited the Terror Museum on Andrassy Boulevard, last year I had visited the Stasi Museum in Berlin and though there were some similarities this centred more on the suffering of the Hungarian people from both the right and the left.

Hungary attempted to keep out of the last war by supporting the German regime but also keeping them at arm’s length. The Hungarian Government had passed a number of anti – Semitic laws but the Jewish community had continued to live in Hungary but with the tide of war turning against the Germans, they eventually seized Hungary in 1944 but they were welcomed by many Hungarians and so the rounding up of the Jews was taken on by the German Adolf Eichmann with the assistance of the Hungarian Nazi Party – the Arrow Cross. Their headquarters was the building on Andrassy Boulevard.

On the banks of the Danube, is a line of shoes, to mark where the Arrow Cross pushed the Jews out, firing into the river as the last Jews were sent to the camps and their deaths.

The museum covers the time the Arrow Cross, terrorised the population before they fled with the Germans to Transdanubia. But by that time the frenzied terror of the Arrow Cross thugs had swelled the number of war’s victims by tens of thousands.

As many of those killed by the Arrow Cross are not known, most of the museum centres on the era from 1946- 1956 when the building was the home of the Hungarian Secret Police – AVO and then the AVH – who were supported by the KGB and sued by the Hungarian Communist Party to control the Hungarian population.

After 56, Hungary was one of the more affluent Eastern Bloc countries and the envy of those living in East Germany, Bulgaria or Rumania, but persecution continued but no longer from this large building in Andrassy Boulevard,

It is interesting to walk through the rooms, to see where the secret police worked from and visit the cells where the political prisoners were kept and the room where the gallows still stand.

The most chilling part of the visit is when you take the very slow lift down to the cells in the basement, the lift is dark and on comes a video, an interview with the cleaner who used to have clean the cell after the prisoner was hung.

Hungary is still a country that is trying to find its way in this new free world, Budapest it quite affluent but many struggle to survive and recently the Far Right have gained considerable support. The logo of the Arrow Cross is now even used by some on the Far Right, many remember the cruelty of the Communist era but maybe the Hungarian people need reminding of the terror imposed on the local population by the Arrow Cross in 1944.

Istvan Eros 1913-1958

According to the charge he took part in the siege of the Koztarsasag Square Prty building and in the lynching of an AVH man on the corner of Aradi Street. He was also charged with arson and having disrupted the December 6 Red Flag demonstration, though the court could not prove these charges.

He was sentenced in the first instance to life imprisonment, and to death in the court of the second instance. He was executed in the building on October 10, 1958 at the age of 45.

Hills and goulash

A few days away from Ipswich coming up so no ‘my week ahead’ today.

In the morning off to Wales taking a group of teenagers to Wales to train for their Duke of Edinburgh Gold award. Returning Friday just for a few hours then off to Budapest for what I hoped was a weekend off football and goulash, but the Hungarian FA have decided to play the MTK – Upjest Derby game on a Friday night. As most Ipswich fans will know the MTK ground was used as the setting for the climax of ‘Escape to Victory’.

The MTK ground was used to replicate a ground supposedly in Paris as the Nazis played the Allies in a football match. Both sides had a smattering of Ipswich players in their ranks, with Pele getting the winning goal, a bicycle kick beating the German (Ipswich) keeper, Laurie Sivell.

Still hope to visit the MTK ground and maybe see a Hungarian third division game in the ground next door.
Getting back to politics, been a quiet week that saw Ben Gummer move to education and bag carrier to Mr Gove, I did wonder (and tweeted) if this meant we would hear nothing from Mr Gummer about the proposed A14 Toll road, this led to Mr Gummer to give one his seemingly patronising answers. He said if I had been paying attention, I would have noticed he had been talking about it for a while.
Funny I hadn’t noticed – will be interesting as it now seem everyone in the county is against the idea of a toll road if the Tory run County Council still provide the funding for the road that they had promised.