The remarkable footballing career of Ferenc Puskas, who has died aged 79 in Budapest, falls into two parts. The first was as the outstanding captain of a remarkable Hungarian team – once called “the best team in the world” by England’s Billy Wright – which he led to the World Cup finals of 1954. The second was as a star of Real Madrid from 1958 to 1966. The watershed was the Hungarian revolution of 1956 when, by chance, Puskas and other Hungarian internationals were on tour with Honved, the army club into which most of them had been drafted. Puskas, possessed of a left foot of astonishing power, and his team-mates, Sandor Kocsis and Zoltan Czibor, all found their way to Spain. Puskas joined Real, with the other two joining Barcelona. Puskas was born in Budapest and brought up in the nearby country town of Kispest. The son of a footballer, he kicked a ball about in the streets with, among others, the future Hungary right-half, Josef Bozsik, and admired such foreign stars as Charlie Buchan, Ted Drake and Spain’s celebrated goalkeeper, Ricardo Zamora. Nicknamed “Ocsi” (little brother), Puskas was coached at the Kispest club by Nandor Szucs and made…