Antal Szabó

Antal Szabó
Personnel
birthday	September 4, 1910
place of birth	Soroksár ,  Austria-Hungary
date of death	April 21, 1958
Place of death	Nürtingen ,  Germany
position	goalie
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
0000-1931	Soroksari AC
1931-1940	Hungária FC Budapest
1940-1941	Weisz Manfréd FC Csepel
	Lampart FC
	Szentlőrinci AC
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1932-1939	Hungary	42 (0)
1 Only league games are given.

Antal Szabó also Antal Steinbach (* 4. September 1910 in Soroksár , today Budapest ; † 21st April 1958 in Nuertingen , Germany ), was a Hungarian football - goalkeeper , who in the 1930s twice with the Hungária FC Hungarian Champion and became vice world champion with the national team in 1938 .

Club career

Szabó, who is rather small for a goalie, first played for Soroksári AC before moving to Hungária in 1931. There he developed into one of the strongest Hungarian goalkeepers of his generation, who compensated for his physical disadvantage with excellent reflexes and was ahead of his time with his playing style of organizing the defense in front of himself. At the same time, however, he occasionally made major mistakes that did not match his performance potential.

He celebrated his first title in 1932 when the blue-whites won the cup against Ferencvárosi FC with a 4: 3 in the replay . In the championship , however, it should only be enough for places between two and four for a long time and so it was until the 1935/36 season before the blue-whites won a championship title under the leadership of coach Alfréd Schaffer . With only 21 goals conceded in 26 games, the defense from Szabó, Gyula Mándi and Sándor Bíró was the strongest in the league. Another championship title followed the next year.

After Hungária was dissolved by the Horthy regime in 1940 , Szabó first moved to Weisz Manfréd FC Csepel and then worked for Lampart FC and Szentlőrinci AC .

In 1956 he left Hungary and died two years later in the FRG.

National team

Szabó completed his first game in the goal of the national team in March 1932 in a 3-1 win against Czechoslovakia . In his second outing a few weeks later, he suffered one of the worst defeats of his career when the Hungarians were beaten 8-2 by the Austrian wonder team on the Hohe Warte . Szabó was then replaced for a few games by József Háda , who was his closest competitor for the post of Hungarian national goalie during the 1930s.

Szabó was able to regain a regular place and was also in goal at the 1934 World Cup . There they reached the quarter-finals with a 4-2 win against Egypt , but where they ended up against Austria .

Four years later, at the tournament in France, Háda was initially in goal in the first game, but from the quarterfinals onwards, the team management trusted Szabó again. The team reached the final with victories over Switzerland and Sweden . There they lost to the Italians 2: 4, although Szabó did not have his best day. He was later quoted as saying that he had at least saved the lives of the Italian players, who had received a telegram from Benito Mussolini prior to the game demanding "victory or death".

The goalkeeper played in the national team until June 1939 and ended his career after 42 missions for his country. It is amazing that he only played four games without conceding a goal.

successes

• Vice world champion 1938
• 2 × Hungarian champions: 1936, 1937
• 1 × Hungarian cup winner: 1932
• 42 games for the Hungarian national football team: 1932–1939

Web links

• Antal Szabó in the database of National-Football-Teams.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Antal Szabo. Retrieved November 16, 2011 .