Greatest Games: Wolves 3 Honvéd 2, 1954

On this week’s Greatest Games Jonathan Wilson and Marcus Speller are joined by Dominic Sandbrook to discuss the 1954 exhibition match between English champions Wolverhampton Wanderers and Hungarian champions Budapest Honvéd.

Under the Molineux floodlights and broadcast on the BBC, excitement swept across Wolverhampton and the entire nation for this one. 

Honvéd starred many of the Mighty Magyars who finished as runners-up in the 1954 World Cup and had sent shockwaves through English football after becoming the first team from outside the British Isles to defeat England at Wembley.

After the win, the English press coined Wolves the ‘champions of the world’, spurring a desire for more continental club football and the formation of regular contests under the guise of the European Cup.

About the panel:

Jonathan Wilson founded The Blizzard in 2011 and is editor of the magazine. He’s contributed to a number of publications including the Guardian and Sports Illustrated as well as having authored Behind the Curtain, Inverting the Pyramid, The Outsider, Angels with Dirty Faces and most recently The Names Heard Long Ago, among others.

Marcus Speller is a host of the Football Ramble podcast as well as Answerable Questions with Questionable Answers. Marcus also regularly hosts our live Q&A events across the country alongside Jonathan.

Dominic Sandbrook is a historian, author, columnist and co-presenter of The Rest Is History podcast. Dominic’s most recent book Who Dares Wins, about Britain in the 1980s, is available from all the expected retailers now.

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