Puskas, one of the last-surviving heroes of 1950s football, has passed away. Inas Mazhar recounts when the Hungarian legend coached Egyptian club Misri Egypt's Misri club has paid tribute to world football legend Ferenc Puskas who died at the age of 79 on Friday in Budapest, after a long battle with illness. Misri was coached by Puskas in the late 1970s. His death saddened Port Said and its club which, during Puskas' tenure, was one of the best teams in the country. Misri's board of directors published obituary ads in several Egyptian newspapers and sent faxes to the Egyptian embassies in Hungary and Spain to pay their condolences. The writer still remembers those days. Her father was a fanatic Misri fan who used to speak with his friends about how Misri had developed in quality under the leadership of Puskas. He, like all Port Said people, loved the man and appreciated his results which had put Misri on the same level with Ahli and Zamalek. Misri was even threatening to be better. Awad El-Harthi worked as Puskas' assistant coach while the former Real Madrid star led Misri between 1979 and 1982. "Since the creation of the club in 1920, this was the golden era of Misri. They were the best seasons in the club's history. I was very lucky to work as his assistant coach, it added to my CV and I learned a lot from him in those three years," El-Harthi recalled. Puskas, who scored 512 goals in 528 Real Madrid appearances, took charge of Misri in 1979 and promptly led the club to their highest finish in 18 years. Their third-place spot was repeated the following two years. The last season was the best for both Puskas and Misri. The latter was on top of the national league standings, and was winning all its home and away matches. The whole country was singing praises of the club, until the team was suddenly beaten by Zamalek 1- 0 in Port Said. This put a bitter end to a fairy tale story. This defeat spelt the end of the club's attempts to win their first championship and caused a number of arguments and disputes in the city. Shortly afterwards, Puskas felt compelled to leave for Spain. The club went into freefall without him, losing all of their remaining seven games to finish the season in fifth spot. "I left as well," continued El-Harthi. "I couldn't work with someone else at that time. I had an offer from Saudi Arabia and left." He added, "We were a successful team together. Misri had other foreign coaches but none were as successful as Puskas. "He was loved by everyone in Port Said because he was a star as a player and as a coach as well. He was fair to everyone and his relationship with the players was flexible but authoritative. One of his main qualities was his ability to read the game, which was very accurate. I had never met someone as good as him at reading the game before. "Puskas was a gentleman -- both on and off the pitch," added El-Harthi. Deadly spearhead of the 'Magic Magyars' -- the first national team to win on English soil -- and club-mate of Alfredo di Stefano at Real Madrid, Puskas was nothing short of a living legend. With an incredible 83 goals in 84 games for his country, the phenomenal talent of this prolific attacking midfielder is beyond dispute. Short and stocky, with limited aerial ability and strictly left-footed, Puskas was far from the stereotypical striker. By dint of an amazing eye for goal, he established himself as one of the linchpins of the Hungarian side which dominated word football in the early 1950s. Born in Budapest on 2 April 1927, Ferenc Puskas Biro inherited his passion for the game from his father. At the tender age of nine, he joined Kispest as a junior, making his first-team debut just seven years later in 1943. Two years later, in August 1945, Puskas made his debut for Hungary in a 5-2 win against Austria, scoring his first international goal. Puskas quickly became known as "the Galloping Major", a reference to his club's links with the Hungarian army. But first and foremost, it was his displays for the national side,which earned him fame throughout Europe and beyond. In 1952, he won the gold medal at the Helsinki Olympic Games . So at the start of the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, Hungary had naturally become the team everybody wanted to avoid. Puskas and his cohorts justified their favourites tag by rifling home 17 goals in their first two games, including a spectacular 8-3 success over Germany, the side they would meet again in the final of the tournament. Having suffered an ankle injury, Puskas did not play again until the final, when he was yet again on the score sheet. But it proved insufficient for Hungary who, after leading 2-0, eventually slipped to their first defeat in four years. Two years later, on 14 October 1956, the end of an era came as Puskas bade farewell to the national team in a game against Austria, scoring his 83rd and last international goal. After the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Puskas, in Spain with Honved at the time for a European Cup match, decided to relocate to the West. In his first full season with Real Madrid, he finished as the club's top scorer ahead of his great friend Alfredo Di Stefano, with whom he enjoyed an almost telepathic understanding on the pitch. Crowned top scorer in the Spanish championship no fewer than four times, he unfailingly delivered the spectacular end product for what was an exceptional generation of players. After obtaining Spanish citizenship in 1961 at the age of 31, he played four games in the colours of his adopted country, including one win and two defeats at the 1962 World Cup in Chile. On 30 June 1967, he finally hung up his boots before embarking on a career as a coach. This saw him contest yet another European Cup final as boss of Panathinaikos (2-0 defeat by Ajax). Puskas' new career also took in stints with AEK Athens, Sol (Paraguay), Colo Colo (Chile) and Misri of Egypt before he returned to Hungary in 1993, where he also had a short spell in charge of the national team. When he eventually retired, he settled in Budapest where, since 2001, the national team has been playing in a stadium named in his honour. Following the announcement of Puskas' death, FIFA President Joseph Blatter said, "I have great sadness in having learnt of the passing away of the legendary Ferenc Puskas, one of the greatest players that I have seen in my life. Very deservedly a holder of the FIFA Order of Merit and, certainly, as the Hungarian federation declared in 2003, the greatest Hungarian player of the past 50 years. "I have always been full of admiration for a man that was capable of scoring an amazing 83 goals in 84 international matches for Hungary, leading the Magyar team to absolute supremacy in the early 1950s with an unbeaten run of 32 international matches that included the 1952 Olympic title and which was only broken in the final of the 1954 World Cup." At the turn of the century, in an international survey, Puskas was voted the sixth best player of all-time.
