“Beautifully written and immaculately researched. Jonathan Wilson is the finest sports writer of his generation” – Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

In 1953, the Mighty Magyars beat England 6-3 at Wembley, a result that echoes through the history of football. A year earlier, this Hungarian team had won Olympic gold. A year later, they lost agonisingly in the final of a World Cup that they dominated. This is the beginning, middle, and end of Hungarian football in the popular imagination.

Only, how come the ideas from this team spread around the world? Why do Hungarian managers spring up in Italy, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, across Europe and the Americas, bringing their secrets with them? And what are the incredible stories they have to tell, of escaping the Nazis and the Soviet communists?

How did the history of modern football come to be born in the Budapest coffeehouses of the early twentieth century?

Fifteen years in the making, this new book from bestselling football historian Jonathan Wilson is the missing piece of the jigsaw; the forgotten story in football’s history, lost in war, in revolution, in death and tragedy.