László Gyimesi always wanted to be a football player. Even the fact that he was failed in five subjects at his school during the semester, including physical education, did not deter him from choosing athletics. He excelled in an unknown small club, Műanyag SC, and was so talented that the legend of Kispest, Lajos Tichy, personally lured him to the Bp. Honvéd, according to an interview with him by Magyar Nemzet.
Photo: Magyar Nemzet/István Mirkó
He quickly broke into the senior team, which won six league titles in the 1980s. He said this in the interview:
“Even at the end of the seventies, we had a very good team, if it weren’t for a lot of injuries, we would have won gold medals even then.
The fact that at least fifteen of us were selected says everything about the squad, and we formed an ideal team in terms of age, knowledge, understanding of the game and structure. Our coach, Imre Komora, was ahead of his time, but not as a coach, but as a manager.
Thanks to him, we were able to receive serious money for success, and although we spent a lot of time in training camps, which was not good for family life, everything was fine with motivation and circumstances. I used to say that if this team was two hundred kilometers to the west and managed by a coach with a greater insight into the football profession, it would have made it to the top four in the European Championship more than once.
In the interview, it was also mentioned that László Gyimesi liked giving assists more than scoring goals.
He never wanted or was able to manage himself, but he was a decisive football player of that hugely successful Bp. Honvéd.
He introduced himself in the national team at a young age, but after a match abroad, head coach Imre Komora and the defense officer accompanying the team thought he wanted to defect, and setting an example with him, he could forget about the national team for five years – László Gyimesi told this story in detail in the interview.
It was also discussed why he was not a member of the team at the World Cup in Mexico:
“We played in Mexico in December 1985, and when we arrived home, national team captain György Mezey said that this is the base, that a few more will join us, and we will meet in January, when we will go to a training camp in an Arab country.
I’ve been waiting for the plane ticket ever since, I didn’t receive an invitation, and no one said a single word about why. I never asked him why I fell out of the frame, because I’m over it.
I believe that György Mezey had Tibor Nyilasi and Lajos Détári for his system, I could only have been on the bench.”
We can find out why he played for two years in Kispest when someone else signed his contract, László Gyimesi talked about the years he spent in Genk, the inglorious present of today’s Bp. Honvéd, and also why he did not work at a higher level as a coach.
The full interview on the website of the Hungarian Nation is available.
