The beautiful plan

Sixty years ago, the first edition of World Soccer carried a two-page spread on what the magazine declared was the greatest game ever played: the 1954 World Cup semifinal between Hungary and Uruguay.

Yet it is a match that slipped quickly from the game’s collective memory, rapidly eclipsed by the feats of Brazil, who won their first World Cup in 1958.

That inaugural World Soccer had remarkably little to say about the reigning world champions; a team that all these years later still have a claim to be considered the best ever and remain the only South American side to win the trophy in Europe. But that 1958 triumph, in Sweden, came before the age of television – which for much of the planet made its World Cup debut in 1970, the year Brazil won the Jules Rimet for a third time.

The images from Mexico, even in black and white, were so exotically striking that it is little wonder the tournament made a deep impression, especially as much of the football was exciting and there was a pleasing lack of some of the controversy that had dogged previous World Cups in the 1960s.

It seems fair to age. They were certainly the most glamorous. Maybe, too, they were one of the least understood, even by their own people.