Hungarian football legend Ferenc Puskas’ ‘miracle’ South Melbourne visit

You don’t have to know anything about football to enjoy Ange & The Boss, an inspirational doco about one of the little-told stories of Australian sport.

Hungarian football legend Ferenc Puskas (1927-2006), widely considered one of the greats of the game, comparable with Brazil’s Pele and Argentina’s Maradona

Ange & The Boss: Puskas in Australia (PG)
77 minutes
In cinemas (screening details: angeandtheboss.com)
★★★★

The charming, heartwarming, inspirational documentary Ange & The Boss is about a brief moment when a sports star shoots into Australia’s orbit and does something that is simple, beautiful and unforgettable.

Real Madrid icons Alfredo di Stefano (L) and Ferenc Puskas (R) in the late 1950s. Picture: Supplied

The Boss is Hungarian football legend Ferenc Puskas (1927-2006), widely considered one of the greats of the game, comparable with Brazil’s Pele and Argentina’s Maradona.

The moment is him landing in Victoria in the late 1980s to coach the South Melbourne Hellas club in the National Soccer League. “It was out of the blue, like a miracle,’’ remembers former club president George Vasilopoulos.

What follows is one of the little-told stories of Australian sport.

The Boss nickname comes from the black Hugo Boss sweatshirt Puskas wears to training. No one pretends the size is anything but extra large, as he is more well-rounded than in his 1950s playing days. “He was literally larger than life,’’ notes former player Pete “Gus” Tsolakis.

His skill level, though, remains on the ball. This film, written and directed by an Australian forward line – journalist Tony Wilson, filmmaker Cam Fink, who is also the cinematographer, and barrister Rob Heath – makes excellent use of archival footage.

The shots of the overweight, sixty-something Puskas playing in Australian friendly matches is a sight to behold. He nails every pass. And when he scores, which he of course does, the opposition players race over to shake his hand. It’s a perfect snapshot of the awe in which he is held.

Ange is one of Puskas’s charges at South Melbourne Hellas: Ange Postecoglou, who would go on to be a Socceroo, as a player then as coach, and who has managed the English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur since 2023.

Ange and The Boss become close, not least as the defender drives the non-driving coach around in his Datsun 200B. Wait for the story he tells about having to change a flat tyre with The Boss on board.

This documentary is about far more than sport. It explores the Australian migrant experience. Greek-born Ange speaks lovingly of the reasons his father decided to move the family to Australia.

There are two “homes” in this strange land: the church and the Greek football club. Ange’s early interest in the game is a bridge to his hardworking father. And it is wonderful to see the footage of male fans at the match, still in the suits and ties they wore to church in the morning.

The filmmakers talk to the players Puskas coached, several of whom became Socceroos. They also speak to the friends Puskas and his wife Erzsebet made during their time in ­Australia.

The coach speaks five languages but English is not one of them, which, as Ange recalls, means instructions are sometimes lost in translation. What is clear, however, is that The Boss put “the boys” first and the scoreboard second. He was Ted Lasso before Ted Lasso.

“I go to the boys first and last. That is my job,’’ he says in an archival interview. The players loved him for it, with one describing him as “the Santa Claus of football’’.

Strategically, he was all-attack, which is no surprise as he scored 84 goals in 85 international matches for Hungary. “Shoot the ball, boys. Ball alone can not make goal.’’

He does have the scoreboard in mind when he tells Kimon Taliadoros that his left foot is “only for standing”. The moment when Taliadoros ignores The Boss and takes a long-range shot with his left boot is another wonderful, and humorous, dive into the visual archives.

The sporting climax is the 1991 NSL grand final between South Melbourne Hellas, with Ange as team captain, and Melbourne Croatia. I will not spoil it for viewers who don’t know the result, but I’ll note it involves what the referee, interviewed for this film, describes as “the strangest penalty shootout I have been involved in”.

You don’t have to know anything about football to enjoy Ange & The Boss. As Tsolakis remarks at the start, “We all knew the footballer but we didn’t know the man.” From that point we are on a marvellous adventure during which we come to know the man who lived for, but not only for, the beautiful game.