A deep, deep, deep dive into the Hungarian influence into the development of soccer across the world. Suited best for passionate fans of soccer and soccer history.

Positives: there is a ton of research distilled into this book and it covers the Hungarian influence in Austria, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, France, Uruguay, Germany, and even the USA. It gives a good picture about the immigration patterns and opportunities in the early twentieth century and how ideas diffused from place to place. And it is searing and unflinching in its examination of the spread of anti-semitism, fascism, and the Holocaust and how it affected Hungarian players and coaches.

Negative: You get dropped right In the start of soccer in Hungary with little idea that f why you should care about reading 400 pages of Hungarian soccer history. there are a ton of coaches and players to keep track of, none of whom I’ve heard before (except Puskas of course, who only appears at the end of the book) so it can be confusing at times. And the books structure doesn’t help. Instead of sticking with a strict chronology or chapters by geography, it does a mashup of both and so people you’ve left behind 150 pages ago make a sudden, confusing reappearance. Most curiously, though, there is little tactical discussion. I’ve read the author’s comprehensive book on the development of soccer tactics, but it would have been nice here to see exactly how and why the Hungarian style (and its later mutations) operated and why it was so innovative.

On the whole, I enjoyed the book, but its probably really only attractive to those that sit at the intersection of “soccer fan” and “history buff.”

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The Names Heard Long Ago: How the Golden Age of Hungarian Soccer Shaped the Modern Game by Jonathan Wilson recounts how the Hungary’s changed soccer and became a powerhouse exporting players and coaches to the world. Mr. Wilson the Football Correspondent of the Financial Times and author of other books on the subject.

One of my favorite memories is going to the 1994 quarter-finals for the FIFA World Cup with my father. We watched Bulgaria beating the defending World Cup champion Germany 2-1. To this day it is considered one of the top ten upsets in any world cup, and one of the top ten days I spent with my dad.

The Names Heard Long Ago: How the Golden Age of Hungarian Soccer Shaped the Modern Game by Jonathan Wilson is an enjoyable book which tells of the glory days of Hungarian soccer. The author goes into a bit of details into tactics and how the Hungarians coaches learned from England and improved the system.

The book gets interesting during the mid-1930s when anti-Semitism and Nazism enters the picture. Many of the soccer clubs, star players and coaches were Jewish. While some of them managed to escape, or survive World War II due to their skills and /or fame, many others didn’t. The author tells of some of their exploits trying to live through the war, only to be hit in the face with Communism when it was over.

Even though the Nazis did ravage Hungary, as well as much of Europe, Communist Russia managed to take the well-known, and feared, Hungarian national soccer team and destroy it. I still remember when Hungary was talked about as a fearsome adversary which I was a kid, and that was about two decades after this book ends.

The book is expertly researched, Mr. Wilson obviously loves the game and its history. The author is familiar not only with the players, coaches, management, and clubs, but is also aware how they interact and how one event reflects, changes, or cascades into others – some of which are repercussions felt today in the world of soccer.