Biography of a football player (part 1) [every correction/comment is highly appreciated :) ] Mészöly was one of the defining football players of the 60s in Hungary as a defender for Vasas and the Hungarian national team. The Magyar team at that time - after the legendary Golden Team of the 50s - was not invincible anymore. As Puskás, Hidegkuti, Czibor and the other top players left the national eleven, a sad, long and inevitable decline has started. Mészöly was one of the emblematic players of that era. According to him, the reason of failures was that the Hungarian team had been stricken by a series of misfortunes, that prevented them from achieving any significant success. Contrarily the real reason for the failures was that Hungary was no longer able to compete with the very quickly professionalizing Western European football. A decade of misfortunes Mészöly was playing central midfielder for the national team of the 1962 World Cup, in Chile, where after getting through the group stage, the team suffered a defeat against Czechslovakia. According to the memoir of Mészöly, they lost because of the Soviet referee, Nikolay Latyshev didn't award a Hungarian goal on purpose. Two years later, in the European Championship of 1964 in Spain, the Hungarians started well the qualifying round, they arrived at the final four by defeating Wales, East-Germany, and France. Here the Magyars met with Spain and got defeated. After that the Hungarians managed to defeat Denmark, winning the bronze medal. In the 1966 world cup in England, during the group stages, the team was defeated by Portugal, on its first match. They needed to win their next match in order to keep the hope of moving to the knock-out stage, however, the next opponent was the titleholder Brasilian selection. Although Pelé didn’t play on that evening, the Brazilian team was brutally strong with Garrincha, Tostao, and Jairzinho. Eventually, Hungary managed to defeat the Brazilians in Liverpool. Mészöly points out in his autobiography that after leaving the field as the victorious team the Beatles came down from the tribune to congratulate them. After defeating Bulgaria, the third team of the group, Mészöly, and his team faced the Soviet Union in the knock-out stage and as it was cast by the faith on the Hungarians, they were defeated again.