Style wars: the story of those who inverted the pyramids

FORGET about Keano in Saipan, Anelka in South Africa or all those rebellious Dutch players down the years who have seen it as their birthright to rail against the perceived idiocy of football’s powers that be. When it comes to both getting mad and getting even in football, none of the above could hold a candle to Bela Guttman.

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”.