José Águas

José Águas
Personnel
Surname	José Pinto de Carvalho Santos Águas
birthday	November 9, 1930
place of birth	Luanda ,  Angola
date of death	December 10, 2000
Place of death	Lisbon ,  Portugal
size	181 cm
position	striker
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1948-1950	Lusitano do Lobito
1950-1963	Benfica Lisbon	282 (290)
1963-1964	FK Austria Vienna	7 00(2)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1952-1962	Portugal	25 0(11)
1 Only league games are given.

José Pinto de Carvalho Santos Águas (born November 9, 1930 in Luanda , Angola , † December 10, 2000 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese football player who won the European Cup with Benfica Lisbon in 1961 and 1962 .

career

Clubs, 1948 to 1964

From 1948 to 1950 José Águas played in the Angolan port city of Lobito in the team of FC Lobito football. He was far more professional as a big game hunter than he was as a footballer. After a friendly game of Benfica Lisbon in Lobito, the Benfica officials took the 20-year-old with them to Portugal immediately after the final whistle. The athletic center forward had drawn attention to himself with his direct pull to the goal and his enforcement qualities. Already in the 1951/52 round he won the title of top scorer in the Portuguese league with 28 goals . He repeated this three times in 1956, 1957 and 1959. Since he was able to win the championship title with Benfica in the rounds of 1954/55 and 1956/57 and was successful in the cup from 1951 to 1959 six times, he had already made it nationally to show a proud record of the round 1959/60. Internationally, however, the representatives from Portugal in the European Cup - including Benfica Lisbon - were only marginally involved.

European successes, 1961 and 1962

With the signing of Béla Guttmann , a Hungarian with an Austrian passport, who had snatched the championship from the capital club Benfica in the 1958/59 round with FC Porto , the career of Águas received another initial spark. From then on he was extremely successful in a team with the Benfica team so clearly that the view of Europe did not seem utopian either. After the immediate championship in 1959/60 - Águas had contributed 18 goals in 25 games - Benfica was qualified for the European Cup of the round 1960/61 . Over Heart of Midlothian , Újpest Budapest , Aarhus GF and Rapid Vienna , Benfica Lisbon played sensationally into the final with captain and center forward José Águas. At the semi-final meeting there was a 1-1 draw against Rapid in Vienna. The opponent in the final on May 31, 1961 in Bern was FC Barcelona , who had eliminated five-time series winner Real Madrid in the round of 16 and were considered the clear favorites. The dream storm of the Catalans with Kubala , Kocsis , Evaristo , Suárez (Suárez was named European Footballer of the Year in 1960 and finished second in the 1961 and 1964 elections) and Czibor seemed to be the only guarantee for another cup victory for a Spanish team . In contrast, the 27 goals by José Águas when he won the title again in 1961 in Portugal did not seem to be the only answer. Before the final in Bern, the Benfica team retired to a training camp in Spiez for eight days and worked intensively day after day towards the final. The favorite came to Bern 24 hours before the game and stayed in a luxury hotel. Benfica won the European Cup with 3-2 goals. Goalscorers were Águas, Coluna and an own goal by goalkeeper Ramallets. Center forward Águas became the record scorer in the EC competition in 1960/61 with eleven goals. In the election of Europe's Footballer of the Year 1961, he finished tenth. After the final, the Benfica storm line-up with José Augusto , Santana, Águas, Coluna and Domiciano Cavém was at least known to the experts. In the games for the World Cup, Benfica lost to CA Peñarol in the decider in Rio de Janeiro . In the championship round in Portugal Águas scored 18 goals in 22 games in the 1961/62 round. The path to renewed participation in the European Cup in 1962 led through Austria Vienna , 1. FC Nürnberg and Tottenham Hotspur . Opponent was Real Madrid on May 2nd in Amsterdam. Ferenc Puskás brought the "Royal" 2-0 lead, Águas scored in the 25th minute by utilizing a rebound from the post after a free kick from Eusébio , the goal. Eusébio, the new striker from Mozambique, just 20 years old, decided the game in favor of Benfica with two goals in the final minutes. After the 5-3 win, captain José Águas proudly raised the European Cup into the Amsterdam sky. The defending champions Benfica Lisbon's storm with José Augusto, Eusébio, Águas, Coluna and Simões now shone brightly in the European football sky. Coach Guttmann left after the second EC victory in 1962 after three rounds of Lisbon and moved to Club Atlético Peñarol in Montevideo. In the 2-1 defeat in the 1963 final against AC Milan , 33-year-old Águas was no longer in the storm of Benfica. In the 1963/64 round he ended his playing career at FK Austria Vienna. Austria paid 720,000 schillings for him. However, he was only used nine times and scored two goals.

From 1950 to 1964 Águas played 289 league games and scored 292 goals.

National team, 1952 to 1962

In the red and green jersey of the Portuguese national football team , José Águas made his debut on November 23, 1952 in Porto in a friendly against Austria. Almost a year later he scored his first goal for the national team in the World Cup qualifier on September 27, 1953 in Vienna, but the downgrading 1: 9 defeat against the Austrians was no joy. He made up for this joy on May 22, 1955 in Porto in a 3-1 win over England. He distinguished himself as a two-time goalscorer against the English stopper Billy Wright . Overall, the team of the Portuguese Football Association (FPF) was internationally second class after the Second World War until the beginning of the sixties, although the Profitum was introduced as early as 1954 . All three world championship qualifications for the 1954, 1958 and 1962 tournaments were lost. Only respectable successes with a 1-1 draw against Northern Ireland and a 3-0 win against Italy were recorded in 1957. It was the same in qualifying in 1961. In Lisbon it was enough at the Estádio da Luz to a 1-1 draw against England and on October 25th they lost the second leg without a stopper Germano in front of 100,000 spectators at Wembley Stadium with 0-2 goals. What was really sensational was the 2-4 defeat in Luxembourg on October 8th, which wasted any chance of participating in the World Cup in Chile. His 25th and last international game played Águas on May 17, 1962 in Lisbon against the team of Paul Van Himst , in the 1: 2 defeat against Belgium. Portugal did not participate in the World Cup until the 1966 World Cup in England. By then, Águas had already ended his career.

Trainer

After his playing career, Águas was a coach at Oriental Lisbon and assistant coach of the Portuguese national team.

literature

• Michael Horn: Lexicon of international soccer stars. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89533-466-9 .
• 211 World's Top First Division Scorers of the Century, 1998, IFFHS.
• The history of the European Cup, Ludger Schulze, Copress Verlag, 1990, ISBN 3-7679-0312-1 .
• Crazy Europa Cup, Sportverlag Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-328-00846-2 .
• The Bela Guttmann Story, Jenő Csaknády , Verlag Bintz-Dohany, Offenbach am Main, 1964.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Maderthaner, Pfoser, Horak (ed.): The elegance of the round leather. Göttingen 2008. p. 85