Hungary

There was a time when the best football in the world spoke Hungarian. The Aranycsapat, the Golden Team of Puskás, Kocsis, Hidegkuti and Bozsik, went four years unbeaten, humiliated England 6-3 at Wembley in 1953 in the match that changed how football was understood, and stumbled only where it could not afford to: in the 1954 World Cup final, lost to Germany in the Bern rain. The 1956 revolution scattered that generation across the world, Puskás to Real Madrid at its head, and Hungarian football began a long decline it is still trying to rise from, with the brand new Puskás Aréna and the national team's return to European Championships serving as signs of life. What remains is the memory of a school that invented the false nine before the name existed, a century old league dominated by Budapest clubs, and the melancholy, proud certainty that no country so small ever came so close to owning the whole game.