Episode 32: Béla Guttman - The Greatest Comeback by David Bolchover

In Episode 32, we take a history lesson with David Bolchover’s book about Béla Guttman, The Greatest Comeback – From Genocide to Football Glory. This is a remarkable and very tragic story, one that is as much about the treatment of Jews in Europe as about Guttman himself.

Béla Guttman played football for mostly Jewish teams in his native Hungary and then in Austria and the US. But it’s as a coach that he found global fame, winning the European Cup two years in a row with Benfica in the early ‘60s. Beyond the football pitch, Guttman survived the Holocaust by hiding in a friend’s attic and later escaped from a labour camp as countless friends and family perished at the hands of the Nazis.

This is a long way from James Milner’s Ask a Footballer.