Zoltán Opata (also known as Zoltán Patai or Ormos Patai; 24 September 1900 – 19 May 1982) was a
Hungarian football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
player and manager. As a player, he won six Hungarian league championships with Budapest-based side
MTK in the 1920s and regularly appeared for
Hungary national football team. After retiring from playing he became a manager and had successful spells with clubs in
Yugoslavia,
Romania and
Poland.
Playing career

Born in
Budapest, Opata first began playing as a teenager at local minnows MÁVAG in 1917. Three years later he accepted an offer to join Hungarian club
MTK, who had lost some of their strikers to foreign clubs in the previous two years. Opata immediately established himself as a regular member of a star-studded squad along with teammates
György Orth
György Orth (30 April 1901 – 11 January 1962) was a Hungarian football player and manager. As well as being involved in football in his homeland, he also managed in Italy, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Portugal. One of best foot ...
,
József Braun and
Imre Schlosser
Imre Schlosser (also known as Imre Schlosser-Lakatos; 11 October 1889 – 18 July 1959) was a Hungarian footballer of Danube Swabian ancestry who played as a forward. He still holds the record as the highest goalscorer in the history of the Hun ...
. In the next five years between 1920 and 1925 MTK absolutely dominated the game and topped the
Hungarian League every season, in addition to winning two
Hungarian Cups.
Opata went on to spend the best part of the decade with MTK (bar a brief spell with the
Slovak side Maccabi Brno in 1924), although in the latter part of the 1920s their fortunes began to change – their cross-city rivals
Ferencváros TC
Ferencváros () is the 9th district of Budapest ( hu, Budapest IX. kerülete), Hungary.
Name
The southern suburb of Pest was named after King Francis I on 4 December 1792 when he was crowned king of Hungary.
History
The development of Fe ...
won three consecutive titles between 1926 and 1928; MTK won only one other league title with Opata in 1929. That year he left MTK and had short spells with several smaller Hungarian sides, including the
Miskolc-based Attila FC, Nemzeti SC and Bocskai SC in
Debrecen and, according to some sources, he even spent the 1932–33 season at
OSC Lille in France. He then returned to MTK briefly in 1933, and then signed for Attila FC again as player-manager in early 1934. Later that year he had in the same role at
AC Nitra in Slovakia.
His first appearance for
Hungary national team came in April 1922 when he played as a right winger in a friendly against
Austria which ended in a 1–1 draw, and his first goal came in 7–1 win against
Italy in April 1924. That same year Opata was selected for the Hungary squad which competed in the
1924 Summer Olympics
The 1924 Summer Olympics (french: Jeux olympiques d'été de 1924), officially the Games of the VIII Olympiad (french: Jeux de la VIIIe olympiade) and also known as Paris 1924, were an international multi-sport event held in Paris, France. The op ...
in
Paris,
where they were considered one of the favorites of the
tournament. In the first round they trashed
Poland 5–0 with Opata scoring a brace. However, in their second round match Hungary suffered a sensational 0–3 defeat to underdogs
Egypt which ended their hopes of winning Olympic medals.
Opata continued to be a regular member of the national team until for the next three years and was used by managers in all positions in the attacking line, appearing in a total of 17 matches and scoring 6 goals between 1922 and 1927. After that period he was called up only once, three years later in the last game of the 1927–30
Central European International Cup
The European International Cup of Nations was an international football competition held by certain national teams from Central Europe & South Europe between 1927 and 1960.Leo Schidrowitz "Internationaler Cup", Vienna 1954 There were competitions f ...
against Italy in Budapest which they went on to lose 0–5.
Coaching career
As Opata had already started working as a player-manager in the mid-1930s he immediately took up coaching after his playing career had ended around 1935. He first managed Hungary at the
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-sp ...
in
Berlin where they got knocked out in the first round by Poland.
Opata would go abroad and coach the
Croatian side
HAŠK, from 1937 to 1938, to their first and only national title,
Yugoslav First League in 1938. Between 1941 and 1945 he coached
CFR Cluj in
Romania and in 1947 he signed for
ITA Arad and they won the
1946–47 Romanian championship. He then briefly returned to Hungary and had spells with
Ferencváros TC
Ferencváros () is the 9th district of Budapest ( hu, Budapest IX. kerülete), Hungary.
Name
The southern suburb of Pest was named after King Francis I on 4 December 1792 when he was crowned king of Hungary.
History
The development of Fe ...
,
Újpest FC and
Csepel SC
Csepel SC () is a Hungarian sports club based in Csepel, the XXI district of Budapest, which is on an island in the Danube in the south of the city. The club was formed in 1912 as ''Csepeli Torna Klub'' ("gymnastics club").
The Csepel SC footb ...
. In the so-called "
Mighty Magyars" era of the early 1950s Opata was a member of the national team's coaching staff and in that capacity helped them win gold in the
1952 Summer Olympics
The 1952 Summer Olympics ( fi, Kesäolympialaiset 1952; sv, Olympiska sommarspelen 1952), officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad ( fi, XV olympiadin kisat; sv, Den XV olympiadens spel) and commonly known as Helsinki 1952 ( sv, Helsin ...
. He then coached the Polish club
Górnik Zabrze and they won the
1957 Polish league with them before retiring in 1958.
Honours
;As player
*
Hungarian League (6):
1920–21,
1921–22,
1922–23,
1923–24,
1924–25,
1928–29
*
Hungarian Cup (2): 1922–23, 1924–25
;As manager
*
Yugoslav League (1):
1937–38
*
Romanian League (1):
1946–47
*
Polish League (1):
1957
1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th y ...
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Opata, Zoltan
1900 births
1982 deaths
Footballers from Budapest
Hungarian footballers
Hungary men's international footballers
MTK Budapest FC players
FC Nitra players
Footballers at the 1924 Summer Olympics
Olympic footballers for Hungary
Hungarian football managers
Men's association football forwards
Men's association football wingers
Újpest FC managers
Górnik Zabrze managers
Ferencvárosi TC managers
FC UTA Arad managers
Expatriate football managers in Poland
Hungarian expatriate football managers
Hungarian expatriate sportspeople in Poland
Expatriate football managers in Yugoslavia
Hungarian expatriate sportspeople in Romania
Expatriate football managers in Romania