Compiled by Péter Krausz
When I was a child, my mother often spoke about Emil Östreicher, but only in whispers. This was because Östreicher had defected in 1956. After knowing each other as children in Győr, they met again in a group of friends in the 1980s, when Östreicher was visiting Hungary.
From the late 1940s, he was a sports manager in Győr, later in Budapest, and at the peak of his career, he worked for the renowned Real Madrid.
Following our foundation’s initiative in 2024, his life and extraordinary professional career have been incorporated into the e-database of the House of Jewish Excellence in Balatonfüred and the Exhibition of Jewish Excellence in Győr. Visitors can easily learn about this extraordinary personality in an interactive way at both locations.
In this article, we follow the editing requirements of the aforementioned database and would like to thank the editors for allowing us to use their entry on Östreicher, which we have supplemented here and there with inputs from additional sources.
His life in a nutshell
He was born in Győr on 2 December 1914, the son of Gusztáv Östreicher, a private clerk, and Terézia Löwinger. [1]
As from 1924, he studied at the Győr in Main Real High School (today Révai Gymnasium), where he also graduated from.
According to school yearbooks, he took part in many sports competitions and was successful in figure skating, rowing, and even 12 km touring rowing. In January 1931, Nemzeti Sport wrote that he had achieved excellent results in the secondary school figure skating competition. [1]
He moved to Budapest in 1936. In 1942 he was deported to Ukraine for forced labour service.
Right after liberation, he was employed by the football team ETO Győr as its Budapest representative. As from 1946, he served as the sports director of the Sports Club Vasas. In 1952, he became the treasurer and financial manager of the Budapest Honvéd soccer team. In 1955, he was elected president of the same team.
He organized the Golden Team’s (the best ever Hungarian soccer team – ed.) tour of South America in 1956, from which he did not return to Hungary. He was appointed professional advisor to Wiener SC in 1957 and then the technical director of Real Madrid, one of the most prestigious football teams in the world. A year later, through his intervention, Ferenc Puskás (the world renown Hungarian attacker of the time – ed.) was acquired by the club. Indeed, it is him, who persuaded Santiago Bernabéu, president of Real Madrid, to sign the legendary Hungarian footballer. On August 29, 1958, the newspaper Dél-Amerikai Magyarság wrote that Real Madrid’s success as a team was due not only to Puskás’s individual brilliance but also to the efforts of Hungarian Emil Östreicher. He helped many Hungarian footballers who had emigrated start a new life in a foreign country. [3]
In 1963, for one season, he is employed as technical director of the Club Torino in Italy. Thereafter he returned to Spain, where he took up a similar role at the clubs Español and later Valencia.
As from 1972, he functions as the manager of the German football club FC Schalke 04 for two years. In 1981, he was hired by the Spanish club of Elche. During the Kádár thaw, in 1984, he was appointed technical director of the Hungarian national team, organising the team’s matches abroad. He held this position for two years.
In 1986 he and his wife moved back to Spain.
He died on 20 October 1992 during a visit to Budapest; he was laid to rest in the Farkasrét Cemetery.
After his death, Real Madrid played their next match wearing black armbands. In 2015, the Puskás International Football Foundation established the Emil Östreicher Award in memory of the renowned sports manager, which is awarded to a relative who has helped an outstanding footballer’s career and life by creating a calm atmosphere in the background. The award is presented annually. [3]
His wife, Margit (Margarita) Eperjessy, died in Madrid on November 22, 1989. She was a multiple Hungarian champion rower who competed for Budapest Honvéd. [1]
In 2021, a street in Győr was named after Emil Östreicher. [1]
Professional career path
Path to the Golden Team
Östreicher’s appointment by ETO Győr as their Budapest representative in 1946 probably played a key role in his life, as his career took off rapidly from there. He also made friends with the then star players of Vasas and Honvéd, Rudolph Illovszky and László Kubala, Ferenc Puskás and József Bozsik. Their alleged intervention led Östreicher to be appointed the treasurer of the club Budapest Honvéd in 1952, and later to the position of head of Honvéd’s soccer division. Since Honvéd was the most influential Hungarian team of the time, and many of the Golden Team members were from there, Östreicher soon became part of the national team’s back-office staff and made himself indispensable, as he was responsible for organising matches abroad.
His role at the Golden Team
In 1956, he became the “manager” of the Golden Team, where he showcased his organizational and financial talents. First, the national team successfully completed a tour of Western Europe (they played friendly matches in Brussels, Lisbon, Paris and Vienna), followed by an unofficial tour of South America, which was never approved. The Hungarian Football Association did not approve the trip, but Östreicher still took the national team for the tour; he did not return to Hungary. First he lived in Austria for a short time and then moved to Spain.
Signing of Puskás by Real Madrid
In 1957, Östreicher was approached by Real Madrid president Santiago Bernabeu (the club’s legendary player after whom the team’s stadium would be named, and under whom it won six European Champions Cups and 16 league titles) to become the team’s technical director; he accepted without hesitation, becoming Bernabeu’s right-hand man. Östreicher constantly recommended Puskás to Bernabeu, who refused to talk about signing him, as the Hungarian striker of international fame, “The Galloping Major” as he was called (Honvéd having been the team of the army, all its players were given military ranks – ed.), had not had a playing license for a year, his career was on a temporary break, and furthermore, he was significantly overweight.
But Östreicher kept on nagging the president until he finally gave in and signed Puskas, who underwent a fantastic transformation, losing 16 kilos in three weeks and playing on the field in such a form as if he hadn’t missed out the previous two years. Puskás spent eight years in Madrid, scoring 156 goals in 180 games, winning the Spanish Championship League five times and the Champions Cup (the predecessor of today’s Champions League) three times. He was a teammate of players such as Alfredo di Stefano, Kopa, and Gento. It was one of the brightest periods of Real Madrid’s history, and Östreicher made an undeniable contribution to this accomplishment.
Signing of Kocsis and Czibor
By the end of the 1950s, Östreicher possessed an extensive network of contacts throughout Europe, especially in Spain. Many of the best Hungarian soccer players of the time emigrated in the 1950s and started a new life in Spain. Among them was László Kubala, a good friend of Östreicher’s, who was signed by Barcelona in 1951 and still remains the fourth most successful player in the team’s history (194 goals in 281 official matches). They stayed in touch after Kubala’s emigration, and when Östreicher also settled in Spain, he provided assistance to other emigrant members of the Golden Team. One of them, Sándor Kocsis, was signed by Barcelona in 1958 through Östreicher and Kubala; a year later Zoltán Czibor also joined the Catalan team.
Östreicher found himself in a controversial situation, as while he was technical director of Real Madrid, he was arranging strong players for its main rival, Barcelona, just to help his compatriots.
Back with the Hungarian national team
Unlike many athletes who defected in the 1950s, Östreicher returned home in his later years, like Puskás, and even found a job. This again had something to do with the then star reporter György Szepesi. Szepesi was appointed head of the Hungarian Football Association in 1979, and a few years later he managed to lure his old friend Östreicher home to become technical director of the Hungarian national team. The case was also reported by the German Der Spiegel, who noted that it was the first time that a member country of the socialist bloc had accepted and allowed an emigrant to return to the national sporting scene. Östreicher worked with national captains Kálmán Mészöly and György Mezey in the mid-1980s, and was mainly responsible for the organisation of training camps and exhibition matches.
Did you know that …
his pub of the time was the centre of Hungarian football life…
After surviving the horrors of World War II, Östreicher opened a wine bar in downtown Budapest, which was considered the second home of football legends in the second half of the 1940s. Regular guests included the later legendary Barcelona player László Kubala, who defected a few years later, but also returning guests from the Golden Team like Puskás and Bozsik, the later national captain Gusztáv Sebes, and the star reporter György Szepesi, also known as the 12th player of the Golden Team.
an award was founded in his memory…
Emil Östreicher has constantly supported talented footballers from the background, arranging contracts and guiding their careers; this is why the Puskás International Football Foundation established the Östreicher Award in 2015, which is bestowed every year to a player’s relative having provided continuous support to the career of a former football star. The first to receive the award was Zsuzsanna Czibor, sister of Zoltán Czibor, followed in the following years by Mihály Tóth’s wife and daughter, widows of Ferenc Deák, Béla Várady, Mihály Lantos, Attila Ladinszky, as well as Kálmán Mészöly’s wife.
his wife was a rowing champion…
Östreicher met Margit Eperjessy, a multiple Hungarian champion rower for Budapest Honvéd, in his 20s, and married her soon afterward. They left the country together in 1956 and settled in Spain, where Eperjessy was nicknamed Margarita and Östreicher Don Emilio. Margit Eperjessy died in Spain in 1989; Östreicher survived his wife by only three years.
he owned two hotels…
When Real Madrid asked him to join the club in 1957, Östreicher said he would accept any salary without any negotiations. Actually, we don’t know how much he earned, but he probably did not do too badly; however, a few years later, the Italian club of Torino offered him ten times his salary of the time. Östreicher took the opportunity, but the management in Torino was dismissed a year later and he too had to leave. He later described leaving Madrid as the worst decision of his life, but he made up for it by using the money he received from the Italians to buy two hotels in Benidorm, Spain, which he made his home for the rest of his life.
the sports daily Nemzeti Sport wrote about him as a young athlete…
Östreicher is considered one of the legends of the football world; even though he was not the star, he was not in the spotlight – the players were. Östreicher was pulling the strings from the background, but this was not always the case. As a young man, he was actively involved in sports; school yearbooks recall his success in figure skating and 12 km cross-country rowing competitions. Moreover, in one of its January 1931 issues, Nemzeti Sport (a Hungarian sports daily – ed.) reported on Emil Östreicher’s success in a figure skating competition of his High School.
Graphic portrait of Emil Östreicher – source: Jewish Excellence Databank
[1] Wikipedia
[2] Google maps
[3] Puskas.com
[4] Nemzeti Sport
[5] reddit.com
English translation by Jewish Excellence Databank