Thursday, December 26, 2024
Dance, Toro, Part 1
He had more talent than Maradona, according to Gyorgy Mezey, the man who coached him as a raw youngster. Enzo Bearzot chose him in his World XI in 1979. The legendary Hungarian coach Lajos Baroti asserted that although he'd known "just about everyone who'd kicked a ball", no-one had his degree of talent. According to almost everyone who saw him play, he was the last great genius of Hungarian football, a throwback to the glorious days of Puskas, Czibor, Hidegkuti and co.
Yet Andras Torocsik never made the most of his talent. A series of largely self-inflicted "incidents" hampered his playing career at every turn, and his life after football was a long, slow tale of alcoholic self-destruction.
Torocsik was born on May 1, 1955 in Budapest at the height of the Hungarian golden era, just before the 1956 revolution which would see so many of their star players become reluctant exiles. As with most players of his generation, it was the street which provided his initial football education. He and his friends played all day long in front of the church on Kassai Square, in the Zuglo area of Budapest. "We would have played all night as well," he later recalled.
Scouts from the local BVSC team discovered him in 1965, and he spent his teenage years at the second division club, learning from the aforementioned Mezey and others. News of his talent gradually spread, and by 1974 he was the hottest young prospect in the country, with the major clubs involved in a tussle for his services.
In Cold War-era Hungary, of course, it was not about who could offer the most handsome fee, but who had the superior political connections. The young Torocsik had hoped to join Ferencvaros, who he had supported since childhood, but it looked for a while as if he would be snatched by the army team, Honved - an eventuality which the decidedly non-military youngster dreaded. But at the eleventh hour, an intervention by the Ministry of the Interior saw him transferred to the most successful Hungarian club of the era, Ujpest Dozsa.
Based in the suburbs of the city, Ujpest had gone from being a poor relation to acting as the standard-bearer of Hungarian football by the early seventies. Regular league title winners, the club were mainstays in the European Cup in this period as well, reaching the semi-finals in the year of Torocsik's arrival. Based around the world-class forward Ferenc Bene, scorer of a famous goal at the 1966 World Cup, the team featured a frontline full of internationals, including the classy playmaker Antal Dunai and the energetic wingers Laszlo Fazekas and Sandor Zambo.
It looked like Torocsik would have trouble breaking into the first team, in other words. But with Bene now over 30 and easing towards retirement, the 19-year-old Torocsik established himself in the side almost immediately, and quickly became a fan favourite. His fleet-footed evasion of defenders became the spur for a cry which would accompany him throughout his time at Ujpest: "Táncolj, Törő!" Dance, Toro!
This balletic style, remarked upon by many contemporary pundits, along with his pop-star good looks, drew inevitable comparisons with George Best. Sadly, this was not the only way in which Torocsik's career trajectory was to resemble that of the Manchester United legend.
Within a couple of years, Torocsik was a member of the national team as well, making his debut in a friendly against neighbours and rivals Austria in 1976. In early 1977, with the World Cup qualifiers beckoning, Torocsik went on a South American tour with the national side, and scored his first international goal against Peru. The last game of the tour was against the hosts of the following year's World Cup, in which a 17-year-old Diego Maradona made his debut for Argentina.
On arrival at the airport back home, Torocsik had his first major run-in with the authorities. The youngster was already no fan of life behind the Iron Curtain, and his luggage on his return from Latin America was replete with various proscribed western goods. He was promptly banned from the national side for a year, along with his close friend Zoltan Ebedli. The veteran coach, Lajos Baroti, pleaded with the authorities to release at least one of them (Torocsik, in other words) for the upcoming qualifiers. But the commissars remained firm initially, and Hungary fought its way through a qualifying group against Greece and the USSR with Torocsik's place up front going to the powerful young Vasas striker Bela Varady.
With another young star, the midfield aerial maestro Tibor Nyilasi, in magnificent form, Hungary topped the group. But there was a final step to be negotiated before they could book their tickets to Argentina: a two-leg playoff against Bolivia. Again Baroti pressed the claims of the young Ujpest star, and this time he got his way. "Toro" would be part of the last leg of the qualifying journey.
To be continued in Part 2.
