Sunday, December 29, 2024
Dance, Toro, Part 4
Things seemed to be looking up for Andras Torocsik in the summer of 1985. No longer the tearaway of Hungarian football, he had recently married and had a son, and despite his relatively advanced age a western European club had finally decided to take a chance on him. But his sojourn in Montpellier was not a happy one. "I signed for Montpellier only for the money," he recalled many years afterwards. "I felt like an exile there."
He was not the only Hungarian signed by Montpellier at the time; he was accompanied by the 1982 hat-trick substitute Laszlo Kiss. But the two had never been close friends, and the strains of an unfamiliar environment and unfamiliar team-mates, plus the stress of raising a young family, put the always sensitive "Toro" under great pressure. The breakdown of his marriage began at that time, according to his sister Eva. "All I can say is that he returned from France a completely different person."
So began his period of wandering. He went back to Hungary after a year in France (Kiss remained), tried unsuccessfully to find another club, drifted to Canada, had a crack at indoor football...and was unable to settle.
Finally, in 1989, he landed at Budapest's MTK club. Pundits wondered whether Torocsik, now 33 and long out of top-level football, would cope with a return to first-division action. But in his first game, at home to Gyor, he delighted the fans after coming on as a second-half substitute, setting up a goal with all his old craft and providing some memorable moments of skill.
In MTK's next game, he was on from the start. But after only 19 minutes, the second of two dreadful fouls by the Tatabanya defender Endre Udvardi left Torocsik with a fractured tibia. The veteran star's old team-mate Sandor Zombori reported the incident in the press with deep anger, and the unfortunate Udvardi had to suffer cries of "Butcher! Butcher!" for many months afterwards.
Torocsik duly underwent an operation, but when MTK representatives came to see him at his apartment, he wouldn't let them in. By the end of the year he was ready to play again, but he simply didn't turn up to training. His time at MTK was over. There were half-hearted attempts to continue his career at other clubs, and the fans still hoped to see just a bit more of their idol before his retirement. But it all came to nothing.
There came a period when various sinecures were found for the ailing former star at various clubs, including his old stamping ground of Ujpest. It might have been possible for Torocsik to gradually pull his life together. But his demons continued to follow him. In 1992, he had another serious car accident, and again, he was drunk at the time. There were even reports that he might face a prison sentence, but these proved to be premature.
Gradually, as the nineties wore on, Torocsik found some semblance of steadiness, producing trenchant ghostwritten articles on the state of Hungarian football for a well-known daily newspaper and making tentative moves towards coaching. (He did enrol in a UEFA B Licence coaching course, but only lasted a week.)
When he turned 50 in 2005, the Ujpest club arranged a gala match in his honour, and Torocsik seemed in fine spirits. He took part in the exhibition match, scored a couple of goals, and his former colleagues were left feeling cautiously optimistic.
But money began to dry up, and his struggles with the bottle continued. In 2010 he suffered a fall at home and hit his head. With only his aged mother living with him, there was no-one to help, and the hematoma that had formed was removed only in the nick of time.
When his living conditions became more widely known, a number of old friends offered to help, including his former international partner-in-crime Tibor Nyilasi and the Ujpest club director Zoltan Kovacs. The latter eventually found him a job as a youth coach, and Torocsik swore not to drop off the wagon again. But he suffered a double tragedy the following year when his mother passed away, and new management at Ujpest pushed Kovacs out the door...and Torocsik with him.
There was another fall in 2014 after a period of heavy drinking, and this time Torocsik did not fully recover. When his friends saw him on his exit from the hospital after the inevitable operation, it was clear to them that "Toro" would not be able to live independently again.
His sister Eva extended his life by a few years, caring for him devotedly, but Andras Torocsik eventually passed away on July 9, 2022.
He never became a Maradona; not even a George Best. But to this day, pace Dominik Szoboszlai, Torocsik is widely viewed as the last genius of Hungarian football. Others could shoot, tackle, or put in powerful headers, but "Toro" could dance around the opposition - and the fans adored him for it.
