Marton Bukovi

Marton Bukovi

Márton Bukovi [ ˈmaːrton ˈbukovi ] (born December 10, 1904 , † February 1985 ) was a Hungarian football player and football coach . He is considered to be the inventor of the revolutionary 4-2-4 system used by the Hungarian national team in the 1950s.

Club career

Bukovi began his career in 1920 with the Budapest second division club Ékszerész SC (German: "Jeweler SC"), where he worked until 1925 before he moved to Italy to Alba Rome . With the Romans he reached the finals of the Italian championship with the victory in the southern league , where they lost to Juventus FC with an overall result of 1:12.

After just one season, Bukovi returned to Budapest, where he joined the Ferencvárosi Torna Club . After the FTC had ended MTK Budapest's ten-year dominance in Hungarian football in the preseason , the green-whites won their next title in Bukovi's first season. The team around old star Imre Schlosser and Vilmos Kohut achieved under the coach István Tóth-Potya not only the championship title but also the cup victory. In the next season, the double followed, in addition, with victories over the Beogradski SK and the SK Admira Vienna , they made it to the finals of the Mitropacup 1928 , where they met SK Rapid Vienna . With a 7-1 win in the first leg, the Budapesters made the overall victory almost perfect, even a 3-5 defeat in Vienna could n't change that. Bukovi was in the middle of both finals.

In the following seasons, the FTC was twice runner-up and once third, before the championship title was won again in 1932, this time the team won all their season games. In the Cup, Bukovi was able to win one last title in Hungary after two defeats in the finals in a row in 1933. At the end of this season he left Budapest and moved to the French professional league for FC Sète , where he played with Ivan Bek and his compatriot István Lukács . Already in the first season the southern French were successful in the championship as well as in the cup and thus got the first double in the history of French football. After FC Sète finished fourth in the championship the following season, Bukovi ended his active career.

National team

Bukovi made his national team debut in December 1926 in a 4-2 defeat by Spain . In the context of the European Cup of National Football Teams 1927–1930 , he played five games, but the Hungarians only ended up in a disappointing fourth place. He made his last game in June 1930 in a 6-2 win against the Netherlands . In total, he wore the national dress eleven times.

Career as a coach

Immediately after the end of his playing activity, Bukovi took on his first engagement at the coaching bench and took over Građanski HŠK Zagreb , which he was to oversee for the next ten years. During this period there were two Yugoslav championship titles and one Croatian championship title and one cup victory during the war years. In 1940 the Croatians made it to the semi-finals of the Mitropacup , but were eliminated due to a draw. After the end of the war he stayed in Zagreb for two more years and looked after the NK Dinamo Zagreb, which emerged from the merger of Građanski and HAŠK .

In 1947 he finally returned home and took over the coaching position at MTK Hungária Budapest, where he worked until 1954. During this period, the club often had to change its name for political reasons and so Bukovi trained the Textiles SE , the Bástya SE and the Vörös Lobogó SE at different times . He built a strong team around the national players Nándor Hidegkuti , József Zakariás and Mihály Lantos , with whom two championship titles and a cup victory came in this period. He introduced the 4-2-4 system and put Hidegkuti as a backward center forward, a role he should also play in the national team.

During this time, Bukovi also worked as assistant to national coach Gusztáv Sebes and was thus involved in the development of the Golden Elf , which became Olympic champion in 1952 and vice world champion in 1954 . In 1955, he and Jenő Csaknády wrote a textbook entitled The Hungarian Football School . When Sebes was removed from his position in 1956, he was succeeded by Bukovi, who had briefly looked after Újpesti Dósza in the meantime . During his approximately one year as national coach, he was able to win six of eight games, the biggest success being a 1-0 win in Moscow , which meant the first home defeat of the Soviet national team .

After his transfer, he took over the MTK again in 1957, which was now called that again and led the team to another championship title. In 1960 he returned to Dinamo Zagreb for one season before taking care of the Diósgyőri VTK for two seasons in 1962 . He then moved abroad again and from 1965 trained Olympiacos Piraeus , whom he led to two Greek championship titles before ending his career.

successes

• 1 × Mitropacup winner : 1928 (as a player)
• 6 × Hungarian champions: 1927, 1928, 1932 (as a player), 1951, 1953, 1958 (as a coach)
• 2 × Yugoslav champions: 1937, 1940 (as coach)
• 2 × Greek champions: 1966, 1967 (as trainer)
• 1 × French champion: 1934 (as a player)
• 1 × Croatian champion: 1943 (as coach)
• 3 × Hungarian cup winners: 1927, 1928, 1933 (as a player)
• 1 × French cup winner: 1934 (as a player)
• 1 × Croatian cup winner: 1941 (as trainer)
• 11 international matches as a player and 8 international matches as a coach for the Hungarian national football team