MEISL: "EFFECTIVE PROPAGANDA FOR PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL"
— Frigyes Becske | 06/07/1928, Vienna —

Hugo Meisl, back from Amsterdam, has so far remained silent on the subject of his Olympic experience, although his opinion is also welcome, following the inflation of articles and statements in the world press on the subject by interested and neutral experts in international football, who have made biased or objective comments on the issue. Meisl, who is otherwise very outspoken, explained his silence by saying that he was tied to a leading German sports magazine and could only comment on his Amsterdam experience in the pages of that magazine. So, even if I did not manage to get a coherent and detailed opinion from him, I did manage to sketch the impressions that the Olympic football events had left on Austria's football leader.

According to Meisl, there were only three top teams in the entire Olympic field: the representative teams of Uruguay, Argentina and Italy. He divided the others into two groups. One group he called the good average category, idolising the Belgians, Germans, Dutch and Swiss, while the other group he called football embryos. In the light of the above, the interest shown in the sporting world, particularly in the Central European countries, in the Amsterdam Olympics, in contrast to England, is considered excessive and unjustified by Hugo Meisl. Even Uruguay and Argentina were not fully satisfying and, in his view, the Amsterdam courtiers would probably have found their match in Budapest, Vienna and Prague. Meisl believes that the South American extra-class side only possess superior qualities from a technical point of view compared to elite Central European side, but that their superiority in this respect is far from such that it can fully balance the much more sophisticated strategies of Hungarian, Austrian and Czech football. 

In the light of technical virtuosity, the conceptual shortcomings of the South American players escape the notice of the superficial observer, but the searching eye of the specialist soon sees that the Uruguayan and Argentinean ball jugglers have in their tactical repertoire no more than the science of Konrád II., Gschweidl, Orth or Káďa manifested in artistic forms.

The Italians, according to Meisl, have only had big games against Uruguay and Egypt. Meisl named the best players of the Olympics as follows:

(Petrone)
             Orsi                        Braine                        Urdinarán
Magnozzi            Tarascone
                                (Scarone)
Evaristo         Fernández         Andrade

Arispe         Nasazzi

Mazali

Meisl, for his part, believes that the Amsterdam amateur Olympics was the most effective propaganda for professional football.

This is how Hugo Meisl spoke about the football Olympics...


See also: Olympic Games XIs