Zoltán Opata

Zoltán Opata
Personnel
birthday	September 24, 1900
place of birth	Budapest ,  Austria-Hungary
date of death	May 19, 1982
Place of death	Budapest ,  Hungary
position	striker
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
0000-1920	MÁVAG
1920-1924	MTK Budapest
1924	Makkabi Brno
1924-1929	MTK Budapest
1929-1930	Attila FC Miskolc
1930-1931	Nemzeti SC
1931-1932	Bocskai FC Debrecen
1932-1933	Olympique Lillois
1933	MTK Budapest
1934	Attila FC Miskolc
1934	AC Neutra
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1922-1930	Hungary	17 (6)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1932-1933	Olympique Lillois
1934	Attila FC Miskolc (player-coach)
1934	AC Neutra (player-coach)
1936	Hungary Olympia
at least 1938	HAŠK Zagreb
	Kolozsvári AC
at least 1947	ITA Arad
	Ferencváros
1950	Budapest Dósza SE
	Csepel Vasas
	Hungary (assistant coach)
at least 1957	Górnik Zabrze
1 Only league games are given.

Zoltán Opata , also known as Zoltán Patai or Zoltán Ormos , (born September 24, 1900 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary , † May 19, 1982 in Budapest, Hungary ) was a soccer player and soccer coach who won six championship titles with the MTK in the 1920s and played in the Hungarian national team.

Club career

Opata's first stop was the small Budapest club MÁVAG , where he worked until 1920 before receiving an offer from MTK, which had lost some of its strikers to foreign clubs in the previous two years. The two-legged, technically well-trained attacker quickly fitted into the star ensemble of the blue-whites, where he played in an attack series with György Orth , József Braun and Imre Schlosser . In his first five years with the MTK, Opata was able to celebrate the championship title every time, plus two cup wins. In 1924 he was with Makkabi Brno for a short time , but soon returned to the MTK. From the middle of the decade, however, the team lost their supremacy in Hungarian football and could only achieve another success in 1929.

Then Opata left the club and first played a season with first division promoted Attila FC Miskolc , where relegation was missed. In the following two seasons he worked for Nemzeti SC and Bocskai FC Debrecen . For the season 1932/33, a job at Olympique Lillois is stated in several sources , but a play could not be proven in French sources, so that a coaching activity appears likely. After that he was at least once again briefly active for the MTK before signing as a player-coach with Attila in early 1934. Later that year he also worked in the same role at AC Neutra in Slovakia.

National team

Opata had his first appearance in the national team in April 1922, when he ran up as a right winger in a 1-1 draw against Austria . He scored his first goal against Italy in 1924 . In the same year, the Hungarians took part in the Summer Olympics, where they were among the favorites. In the first round Poland were beaten 5-0, with Opata contributing two goals. However, this was followed by a sensational 3-0 win against Egypt and with it the premature elimination from the tournament.

Until 1927 Opata was part of the national team and was used in almost every position in the attack line during this time. In May 1930 he was called up again and made his last game in the Nations Cup when the Hungarians gave away the victory with a 0: 5 against Italy in the last game. In a total of 17 international matches, Opata was able to score six goals.

Coaching career

After Opata had already taken over the coaching post in some of his player stations in the 1930s, he continued this career after the end of his active career. In 1936 he was in charge of the Hungarian Olympic team at the Summer Games in Berlin, which, however, had to leave after a first round defeat against Poland.

He then worked in Yugoslavia, where he won the championship title with HAŠK Zagreb in 1938. During the war years he looked after the first division club Kolozsvári AC from Cluj-Napoca. In 1947 he became Romanian champion with ITA Arad and then briefly took over the coaching position at Ferencváros . From 1950 he was in charge of Budapest Dósza SE and then Csepel Vasas for one season . During the time of the Golden Elf , Opata was also part of the national team's supervisory staff, for example at the 1952 Summer Olympics when the Hungarians won the title. In 1957 he led the Polish club Górnik Zabrze to the first championship title in club history.

successes

• 6 × Hungarian champions: 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1929
• 2 × Hungarian cup winners: 1923, 1925
• 1 × Yugoslav champion: 1938 (coach)
• 1 × Romanian champion: 1947 (coach)
• 1 × Polish champion: 1957 (coach)
• 17 games and six goals for the Hungarian national football team: 1922–1930

Web links

• Zoltán Opata in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )