For the once-mighty Magyars, merely competing at European football’s top table is a feat they no longer take for granted after pain of wilderness years

The fact that Hungary needs an extraordinary turn of events to qualify for the knockout round is not quite how their legions of followers expected Euro 2024.

Yet no one present at the MHPArena in Stuttgart tomorrow will ever blithely dismiss the achievement of simply competing at this level again.

For over thirty years, a country that revolutionized the game in the 1950s with its prototype Total Football found itself in international exile, a perpetual spectator whenever the big summer festivals began.

Considering their important contribution to the evolution of the beautiful game, there was a deep sense of sadness at this hopeless situation.

As any player of the game will tell you, the Magic Magyars, as they became known, were one of them the all-time great sides, with Walter Winterbottom’s England being slaughtered twice in their heyday (6-3 and 7-1).

With Ferenc Puskas leading an all-star cast including Zoltan Czibor, Jozsef Bozsik, Nandor Hidegkuti and Sandor Kocsis, they remained undefeated for almost four years.

Their defeat by West Germany in 1954 in Bern remains perhaps the biggest setback in a World Cup final.

A few years ago the BBC called the so-called Golden Team the greatest team in international football history. By common consent, only the majestic Brazilian section of 1982 and the Netherlands in the 1970s offer them competition for the best who never lift the trophy.

Yet Hungarian football entered the equivalent of a nuclear winter after the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, only picking up steam again when the national team qualified for Euro 2016.

How was it even possible? The answer seems nuanced.

Take to the streets of Budapest and the arrival of democracy is often cited as the main reason for the major decline in the number of people over 50.

Their reasoning is that when the country was under communist rule, football was collectivized. Most of the big players from the 1950s played for Honved, the army team. This ended in one fell swoop in the late 1980s.

However, it says a lot about the level of player Hungary regularly produced at their peak that a similar disruptive event did not prevent the national team’s standard from plummeting long before then.

When Honved lost the first leg of their 1956/57 European Cup tie with Athletic Bilbao 3-2, the expectation was that they would make progress in Budapest.

But before any play could begin, the capital was in the grip of an uprising. The players decided not to return to Hungary and arranged for the return match to be played in Brussels.

Honved were eliminated 6-5 on aggregate and many of their players were left in limbo. Kocsis and Czibor moved to Barcelona, ​​while Puskas signed for Real Madrid.

Outraged by the Red Army tanks that suppressed all public opposition to the communist regime, none of the three ever played for Hungary again (although Puskas, after taking Spanish nationality, was allowed to represent his adopted country at the 1962 World Cup) .

Despite losing the jewels in their crown, Hungary still reached three consecutive World Cups: Sweden 1958, Chile 1962 and England 1966.

A new generation, led by Ferenc Bene and Florian Albert, took them to the semi-finals of the 1964 and 1972 European Championships.

Throughout this time, at both club and international level, there was no apparent decline in standards. Far from it, in fact.

MTK Budapest finished runners-up to Sporting Lisbon in the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1964. Ferencvaros won the tournament a year later, beating AS Roma, Manchester United and then Juventus in the final.

Years later, at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, El Salvador was defeated 10-1 by the Hungarians – a tournament record that stands to this day.

Although qualification for the finals in Mexico was secured four years later, it proved to be a cathartic experience and, to date, the last time Hungary reached the biggest show in the world.

They lost their opening match 6-0 to the Soviet Union, partially redeemed themselves with a 2-0 win over Canada, but were then dismissed with a 3-0 defeat to Michel Platini’s France.

By now the warning signs of decline were clear. The pace of decline accelerated in the 1990s. By 1996, Hungary had fallen to 87th in the FIFA rankings.

The following year there was only a glimmer of hope: a play-off against Yugoslavia for a place at the following summer’s World Cup in France. The result was a soul-destroying 12-1 aggregate defeat.

If this was simply a consequence of the game rotting after the dawn of democracy eight years earlier, it seemed astonishing that other countries in the same situation – the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland – continued to produce good international parties.

The feeling in Hungary is that football was simply no longer considered important to those in power.

Previously funded directly from the central budget and indirectly through state-owned enterprises, the democratically elected government simply stopped supporting the game.

Clubs disappeared overnight or were on the brink of bankruptcy. Ferencvaros were demoted because of their financial affairs. With the Bosman ruling depriving clubs of external funding, academies were cut back and panic selling of assets became the order of the day.

In 2010, when the game was a source of national shame, a change in government regime changed course. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán promised to do whatever was necessary to restore Hungary’s reputation as a credible football nation.

According to the Hungarian Football Association, more than £2 billion has been invested since then. Pro-government oligarchs also pour their wealth into a number of projects.

Gradually, the dilapidated stadiums were replaced by shiny buildings and new pitches were built all over the country. The game was effectively rebuilt from the bottom up.

Yet it would not be until November 2015, the night Norway was defeated in the play-offs for the 2016 European Championship, that the country would look itself in the mirror again.

It was quite a reintroduction to the big stage. Hungary not only qualified, but topped a group with Austria, Iceland and eventual winners Portugal, before falling to Belgium in the last 16.

A humiliating loss to Andorra in the failed 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign was a reminder of many dark days, but it turned out to be a volatile event.

Hungary reached the Euro 2020 thanks to a play-off win over Iceland and achieved automatic qualification this summer by topping their section without losing a single match.

A new generation, led by Liverpool midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai, has developed and gone on to play for some of Europe’s biggest clubs.

Significantly, the huge transfer fees they went for have helped further develop the domestic game. It says a lot that nine of the players in manager Marco Rossi’s 26-man squad for Germany play for clubs in their home country.

The Magyars may not have been as magical at this tournament as they had hoped, but they are least back where they belong.