Style wars: the story of those who inverted the pyramids
Born in Budapest in 1899, Guttman is regarded as one of the most influential managers in the development of the game in the post-war years, his nomadic spirit, coupled with a bloody-minded refusal to suffers fools gladly, seeing him crisscrossing the planet to take up – and then just as likely quickly discard – managerial posts in Hungary, Austria, Cyprus, Italy, Portugal, Romania, the USA, Argentina and Brazil over the course of 40 tempestuous years.
Quick-tempered and dismissive of authority, the premature end of his international career as a player after just three full caps for Hungary had already constituted what, nowadays, we might euphemistically call a “heads-up”.
Selected as an attacking midfielder in the national team for the 1924 Olympics in France, Guttman was appalled by the association’s inadequate preparations which included the travelling party being based in a hotel in Montmartre, the better to suit the blazers’ liking for nocturnal outings, he felt, rather than the players’ sleep requirements.
Someone you and I know might have blasted the selectors and someone else you and I know might have gone on strike, but not bellicose Bela – he decided the most appropriate form of protest would be to lead his fellow-players on a rat-catching expedition around the hotel, following the successful conclusion of which he then proceeded to tie the captive rodents by their tails to the door-handles of the rooms occupied by the Hungarian officials. Now that I think about it, “a wake up call” might be the more appropriate modern terminology. And, having made his point, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that Guttman never played for his country again.
As a manager, Guttman enjoyed title-winning success almost everywhere he went, from Sao Paulo to Benfica, but his insistence on doing things his way or the highway meant he rarely got to outstay his welcome.
In 1946, at the Romanian club Ciocanul, he insisted on being paid in edible goods to overcome Europe’s crippling post-war food shortages and then, when a director tried to interfere in team selection, Guttman heard him out, calmly replied ‘Ok, you run the club, you seem to have the basics’ – and left.
The following season, he was back in Hungary to win the title with Ujpest and then on to Kispest where he replaced the father of the great Ferenc Puskas as coach. But during a game in which the elder Puskas had prevailed on a player to ignore the new man’s instructions, Guttman retired with a racing paper to the stands for the second half and then took a tram home, never to return.
In 1954, he was in Italy, hoisting AC Milan to the top of the table but, after a series of rows with the board, he was dismissed. His farewell at a stunned press conference was characteristically memorable: “I have been sacked, even though I am neither a criminal nor a homosexual. Goodbye”.
Guttman once defined the role of the manager as being akin to that of a lion-tamer.
“He dominates the animals, in whose cage he performs his show, as long as he deals with them with self-confidence and without fear,” he declared. “But the moment he becomes unsure of his hypnotic energy, and the first hint of fear appears in his eyes, he is lost.”
Hello Roy Hodgson! Bela Guttman won plenty of battles but, eventually, lost out in the war to have football played “in the right way” as, for a stifling period, his attacking conceptions gave way to the bolted door of the catenaccio defensive system. Still, the seeds of his influence, would become evident again in the full flowering of 4-2-4, a swashbuckling formation which achieved its apotheosis when Brazil dazzled the world in 1970.
Bela Guttman died in his beloved adopted home of Vienna in 1981, aged 81, having left an indelible mark on the game. “Guttman, more than anyone else since (Arsenal’s) Herbert Chapman, defined the cult of the manager,” is how Jonathan Wilson puts it in his superb ‘Inverting the Pyramid – The History of Football Tactics’, an award-winning book which is now widely available in paperback.
Do yourself and favour and plunge right in. If the title suggests a dry treatise, then the legend of Guttman – one of many colourful tales in the book – should be enough in itself to confirm that nothing could be further from the truth.
From the fabled WM, which once seemed set in stone, through to 4-1-4-1 and all variations thereof, there is certainly plenty of tactical stuff here to meet the requirements of even the most ardent bluffer, but just as a system is only as good as the players who implement it, so matters of style and shape and philosophy are informed by the personalities who dream them up and the personalities who try to tear them down.
In short, ‘Inverting The Pyramid’ is one of the most absorbing, illuminating, elegantly written and downright entertaining football books you could ever wish to read – and the perfect riposte to the ignorance of numbskulls everywhere who persist in wondering how anyone could ever get worked up about 22 grown men chasing after a ball. I’d loved to have heard them putting their case to Bela Guttman.
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