Ferenc Puskás: the Galloping Major

Ferenc Puskás was the heartbeat of the Hungary side of the early 1950s, the Mighty Magyars, who for a few years played football unlike anyone else. Nicknamed the Galloping Major for his army rank, he led a team that went years without defeat and dismantled opponents with quick passing and constant movement. Their crowning statement came at Wembley in 1953, where Hungary became the first continental side to beat England on their own turf, winning 6-3 and exposing how far the game's inventors had fallen behind.

That great Hungarian team went into the 1954 World Cup as overwhelming favourites and reached the final, only to lose to West Germany in the match remembered as the Miracle of Bern. Puskás, not fully fit, scored but could not drag his side over the line. It remains one of football's great what-ifs — a team widely regarded as the best never to win the World Cup, undone in a single afternoon. For all his later triumphs, that defeat shadowed the peak of his international career.

After the Hungarian uprising of 1956 scattered the team, Puskás eventually joined Real Madrid, arriving past thirty and supposedly past his best. Instead he was reborn. Alongside Alfredo Di Stéfano he formed a devastating partnership, winning European Cups and league titles and terrifying defences across the continent. His most famous night came in the 1960 European Cup final, when he scored four goals in a 7-3 victory — an individual display in a showpiece final that has rarely been matched.

What defined Puskás above all was his finishing. Squat and unassuming in build, he possessed a left foot of astonishing power and precision, and he scored at a rate that still looks barely believable across both his Hungarian and Spanish careers. His name now lives on in the annual FIFA Puskás Award for the best goal of the year — a fitting tribute to a man for whom scoring goals was less a skill than a certainty. He died in 2006, remembered as one of the finest ever.