Istvan Mezei
István Mezei (born 1947 ) is a Hungarian football manager.
Life
István Mezei was born into a Roma family and grew up in poverty. He worked as a bus driver. Mezei was an active soccer player but had to give up his career at the age of 25 due to a knee injury. 1979/80 he was among the coaches of the Hungarian national team during qualification for the 1980 Summer Olympics , but the team was eliminated in the second round against Czechoslovakia.
Mezei organized in the 1980s with Hungary's football idol Janos Farkas , who, however, died in 1989, a football youth work among the Hungarian Roma. In 1992 he founded a national Roma soccer team and became its team manager in 1994. In 2007 he received the Prima Primissima Prize (Prima Primissima díj) for this work .
In 2012, the national team of the Hungarian Roma, which he led as team leader, became vice European champion at the European minority football championship (Europeada) organized in Germany . In 2016 in South Tyrol , the team was eliminated in the group stage of the Europeada.
Web links
- Mirko Schwanitz: Hungarian football legend Istvan Mezei - A Rome dreams of the Champions League. (pdf, 306 kB) In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Feature”. July 10, 2018 (also as mp3 audio , 40 MB, 43:45 minutes).
- Prima Primissima: Mezei István, a roma fociválogatott menedzsere. In: Deluxe Magazin. November 14, 2007(Hungarian).
- Ma 70 éves Mezei István. In: mlsz.hu . February 28, 2017(Hungarian).
Individual evidence
- ^ Hungarian Gipsy National Football Team , at Europeada, 2016
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mezei, Istvan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Hungarian football manager |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1947 |