- Before the World Cup you said that you would only watch the best 16 games. Could you resist not watching more?

- I saw some, but there weren't really any matches that I could watch until the end. Things started to get exciting in the second round of the games. There were a very high number of close scores and I very much liked one or two matches, for example the one between Germany and Argentina. The Brazilians have been my favourite since I was a child, and it was a big disappointment when they dropped out, and that no South American team qualified as the best four. I started to believe that the Germans, who were playing surprisingly well, would win, until I saw the Spain vs Germany match, in which the Spanish didn't play well as much as the Germans played badly.   

- What would you say about the emphasis in the World Cup being on defence, and the Brazilians not being up to their usual fine playing?

- Football has changed a lot in the last few decades. The teams try to get results by deploying different tactical elements and style than in the old days. But it would be good if the end did not justify the means because football is a game of mass entertainment and power-playing should not dominate it. There is a kind of magic in football that cannot be produced in other areas of sport. I can only guess at the reasons for this. I can't express it in words.

- National teams made it to the World Cup such as the Slovak, Slovenian, Swiss and Danish teams, countries with championships that are smaller and as weak as ours.

- I must say that the problem with Hungarian football is not the playing but rather the mentality of the players. The Hungarian football players of today have no respect for their club, their coach, their fellow players, the spectators or even the game itself. They think the spectators - if indeed there are any in the stalls - will respect them even if they just stroll out onto the pitch and show themselves. They don't play the game, but rather a role. A foreign star like Messi may earn millions but he still tries to constantly improve his performance. In contrast with this, if a Hungarian player gets a good contract, he leaves his team. So the problems in Hungarian football are not about technique and tactics or how the players approach the game - they are rather moral problems.

- Like in Hungarian society?

- Football is a reflection of the country. With the kind of mentality that has developed in our society in recent decades, why would football be purer than the environment that produces it? These days a player goes onto the pitch and mechanically goes through a few drills and runs off to pursue his own agenda. It does not even occur to them that they should "serve" a branch of sport which has always played an important role in Hungarian people's lives. In the fifties ten million odd Hungarians said: "we have beaten the English".  Not the Golden Team but "we". Millions of Hungarians felt that we were on top of the world. It's sad if the point of this has to be explained to an adult Hungarian football player.  

- According to Béla Hamvas (Hungarian writer, philosopher and social critic - trans.) wars are fought on the football pitch, where nations clash and with the right national pride the weaker team can defeat the stronger one. 

- Ever since football has existed, strength that stems from the right spiritual attitude has played at least as much a main role as technique. I said this back in the sixties but it only made me enemies. We need to finally develop that absolutely pure, professional system of playing that the English perfected eighty years ago. We already have the coaches to do this.

- Apart from the Golden Team, the national team led by György Mezey was the only one that wasn't defeated over a period of four years. They beat the Brazilians, the Germans and the Dutch. Even at that time our championship was weak, but it seems that Mezey found twenty players who believed that they could beat anybody.

- Yes, he just found such a team of players in Székesfehérvár. Last year nobody dared say that Videoton would make it into the best three even, but last spring they suddenly grew wings, and they finally ran for the championship title. Of course the coach has a kind of magic. But that is only possible if he is not surrounded by individuals who are not experts but interfere in things they don't understand.  

- Gusztáv Sebes is said to have been not so much a coach as a psychologist for the Golden Team.

- I shouldn't talk about him because we had so many conflicts in which I always came out as the loser and some of them concerned the ÁVH (state security) and a lot of other things. Gusztáv Sebes wasn't a professional....he was a party functionary.

- Would the Golden Team have won without him?

- It would even have been easier. Sebes wasn't a coach but rather a good party leader who always knew how to treat a player so that he would be able to adapt to a task. He had a lot of tools to do this with. He had a confidential telephone line in his room and he could have things done and people ordered about with the push of a button, and he could select those people who did not present a threat to him professionally. It's not a coincidence that such highly talented coaches as Márton Bukovi, Károly Sós and Károly Lakat couldn't get anywhere near the national team until Sebes was dismissed.

- Who was really directing the Golden Team at that time?

- The national team had four world class players: Cucu Bozsik, Öcsi Puskás, Nándi Hidegkuti and Sanyi Kocsis. They ruled the pitch and decided every aspect of Hungarian football.

- This year's World Cup didn't favour teams full of stars but those that worked well as a team. What made the Golden Team a team?

- The fact that as well as being star players they pulled their own weight. In addition to this, the four players I mentioned decided that the national team would follow the system of playing invented by Márton Bukovi, which the Brazilians later called 4-2-4, replacing the classic pyramid formation, which had more forwards and midfielders. That team was not only famous because of its victories but also because they introduced the 4-2-4 formation into world football.

- What do you think of today's Hungarian goalkeepers?

- There was never a period in which there were not two or three outstanding goalkeepers in Hungarian football. But the future of Hungarian football doesn't depend on them. They are the most enthusiastic, most well-meaning players in football. Many years ago I saw the English film called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. The goalkeeper is in almost the same mental state and practical situation in football as the long distance runner in his sport because neither has a partner. While the others train, the goalkeeper works. It's different to score a goal in football than get a goal. If the goalkeeper saves the ball, that is in itself annihilation. Saves often appear brilliant because they please the spectators, but from within it's completely different situations that count as brilliant.

- Before the World Cup, after we were defeated by the Germans and the Dutch, many people said we would never qualify.

- We could perform miracles with this same team in two years if the head of the association was not a foreign coach who knows nothing about Hungarian football. But a Hungarian expert can only be successful if he is allowed to work. Unfortunately, nowadays neither the club teams nor the national team is under the scope of influence of the coach. There are some managers in the Hungarian football association who would like to bathe in popularity and there are some coaches subjected to them whose range of responsibilities does not necessarily include doing professional work. In the west the club management produces the right players and conditions, but they entrust the professional work to the coach. They don't interfere in things they have no idea about. This is a good habit that should be adopted in Hungary too.