"ENGLISH FOOTBALL HEGEMONY IS A THING OF THE PAST — WE ARE EQUAL OPPONENTS"
Frigyes Becske | 17/05/1930, Vienna.

In our coverage of the England-Austria match, we wrote that it was a very instructive match, as we watched two teams playing in completely contrasting styles in a magnificent contest. 

The English national team, consisting of the best eleven footballers in the British Empire, which has over a million reserves, presented the modern "W-formation" kick and rush style in Vienna, in almost perfect execution, while the Austrian representative team applied the scientific football method in incomplete execution against the English, which the old great MTK, Amateure and some of Britain's elite peace bands cultivated to a much higher standard. 

This is the definitive conclusion we can draw from the England-Austria match and it settles the much debated technical problem of whether the scientific style should be more expedient than the long passing game based on momentum, power and raids. Just as in Budapest on the Üllői út, the Hohe-Wart also failed the momentum style. 

If the Austrian team had had the technical preparedness and perfect fitness of the English, the undisputed superiority of their Scottish style would have translated into a more resounding victory. This victory, however, was lost, because the representative Austrian team, playing perhaps the best football in Europe today relatively speaking, apart from the one and only Gschweidl, has no outstanding footballing skill. In terms of football strategy, however, even these Viennese players, who were not even close to being exceptional in the sense of Konrád II., Schaffer and Orth, proved to be football professors against England's best footballers, who were finally revealed to be not artists of this beautiful game, but merely highly skilled workers. 

The old MTK, Sparta, Amateure or the old Sunderland would, in the opinion of the Viennese experts, have relegated the English eleven at Hohe-Wart to an inferior role, and they were quite outstanding in terms of technical ability, speed, starts, fighting ability and head play. It follows that we must adopt the Viennese and Italian approach to the game as a guiding principle, the golden rule of more by force than by reason. 

We are in full agreement with the Austrian sports press that English football hegemony is now a thing of the past, and what we have seen has only confirmed our repeatedly expressed conviction that we will surpass the English footballing class that can still be considered equal today if the British do not revert to a more purposeful and more meaningful scientific method of football on the basis of their experiences in Berlin and Vienna, and if we pay more attention to the technical training of our players and the development of their physical fitness. 

The English team's performance in Berlin and Vienna may have redeemed the British classics for the continental failures of the island nation's club teams, but only in part, because it has also finally dispelled the illusion of those who went into this match believing that it would be played in the spirit of English hegemony, which has long been disputed. The English hegemony of yesteryear is our equal and this realisation on the part of the British will soon see leading European football teams playing away on British soil.

RANKING OF FOUR NATIONAL TEAMS

With the help of Hugo Meisl, Dr. Bauwens, Artúr Kolisch, Seemann and some other experts who watched the Hungary-Italy and the Austria-England matches, we have prepared a ranking of the Hungarian, Italian, English and Austrian national teams and players in the Ring Café on Sunday, which looks very sad for us and will certainly be corrected for our next national team appearance. The ranking is as follows:


TEAMS

Tactics: 1. Austria, 2. Italy, 3. England, 1. Hungary. 
Technique: 1. England, 2. Austria, 3. Italy, 4. Hungary. 
Physics: 1. England, 2. Italy, 3. Austria, 4. Hungary.

PLAYERS

Goalkeepers: 1. Hiden, 2. Combi, 3. Hibbs. 
Full-backs: 1. Goodall, 2. Rainer, 3. Tandler, 4. Caligaris. 
Wing half-backs: 1. Strange, 2. Pitto, 3. Klima. 
Centre-halves: 1. Webster, 2. Hofmann, 3. Ferraris. 
Wingers: 1. Crooks, 2. Orsi, 3. Titkos, 4. Constantino. 
Centre-forwards: 1. Gschweidl, 2. Meazza, 3. Watson. I 
Inside forwards: 1. Jack, 2. Magnozzi, 3. Baloncieri.