Benfica 5, Real Madrid 3: the night Eusébio won Amsterdam

When the Dutch referee Leo Horn blew the final whistle at the Olympisch Stadion in Amsterdam on 2 May 1962, supporters swarmed around the Benfica players. A press photographer caught Eusébio da Silva Ferreira held above the crowd, bare-chested, one fist in the air, with a Benfica banner behind him. He was 20 years old and had just scored twice in a European Cup final.3 sources3 sources

Alfredo Di Stéfano, the Argentine-born Real Madrid forward who had been Eusébio's idol, had faced him for the first time that night. Di Stéfano's shirt went home with the new European champion.1 source1 source

Benfica had beaten Real Madrid 5–3 after trailing 3–2 at half-time. Real had won the first five European Cups, from 1956 to 1960. Benfica had won the trophy for the first time a year earlier, beating Barcelona in Bern, and now it had kept it.3 sources3 sources

That first title had been a tight 3–2 win over Barcelona in Bern, with goals from José Águas and Mário Coluna and an own goal by the Barcelona goalkeeper, Antoni Ramallets. In Amsterdam the champions faced the side they had replaced.1 source1 source

Portugal in 1962 was a dictatorship, the Estado Novo (New State) of António de Oliveira Salazar, and it was at war. Fighting had broken out in Angola in 1961 and would spread to Guinea in 1963 and Mozambique the year after. The regime tried to use its African footballers for propaganda, as the historian Nuno Domingos has shown in the case of Eusébio.2 sources2 sources

The spring of 1962 was tense at home too. On May Day in Lisbon a 25-year-old, Estêvão Giro, was killed by the police near the Largo do Caldas, and a week after the final students at the Cidade Universitária began a hunger strike in their long fight with the government.1 source1 source

Since the late 1940s the regime had let gifted players from the African colonies move to clubs in Portugal itself. Eusébio, born in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique, was the most famous. Benfica brought him to Lisbon in December 1960 and won a months-long fight with its Lisbon rival, Sporting, to keep him, a story told in our article on his life and death.3 sources3 sources

The man who built the team was Béla Guttmann, a Hungarian born in Budapest in 1899. He had played for Hungary at the 1924 Olympics and coached, by Olympedia's count, 25 teams in 12 countries without staying long at any of them. He came to Benfica in 1959 after winning the league with its northern rival, FC Porto.3 sources3 sources

His life had already been a long journey. He starred for MTK in Budapest, moved to the Jewish club Hakoah in Vienna, and in the 1920s went to the United States, where he played for New York clubs, ran a bar during Prohibition and lost his savings in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Back in Europe he won the Hungarian league and the Mitropa Cup with Újpest in 1939, and he later coached Honvéd, the club of Puskás himself.2 sources2 sources

Simões remembered him as extremely demanding and a man of few words, who lectured his players on life as much as football: put your money in the bank, think of your children's future, go to bed early, stay away from the night life, respect your wife.1 source1 source

Real Madrid were the team everyone measured themselves against. Di Stéfano was three months short of his 36th birthday. Ferenc Puskás, the star of Hungary's great side of the 1950s, had refused to go home after the Soviet army crushed the Hungarian uprising in 1956, served a two-year ban and joined Madrid. In the 1960 final at Hampden Park in Glasgow he had scored four goals in a 7–3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt.3 sources3 sources

Guttmann's second European side was stronger than his first. Eusébio and an 18-year-old winger, António Simões, had come into the team, and Simões's arrival moved Domiciano Cavém back into midfield alongside Mário Coluna. According to Maisfutebol, Simões is still the youngest player to have become a European champion.2 sources2 sources

The campaign began in Vienna on 31 October 1961 with a 1–1 draw against Austria, Águas scoring Benfica's goal. The return in Lisbon a week later was easy: 5–1, with two goals each for Joaquim Santana and Águas and one for Eusébio, his first in the competition.2 sources2 sources

The quarter-final was the scare. Benfica lost 3–1 in Nuremberg and then won the return in Lisbon 6–0. Águas scored in the first minute and Eusébio in the fourth; Coluna, Eusébio again and José Augusto, twice, did the rest. In the semi-final they met the English champions, Tottenham Hotspur. Benfica won 3–1 at home and held on at White Hart Lane, where they lost 2–1 on a heavy pitch and their goalkeeper, Alberto da Costa Pereira, kept them in the tie.3 sources3 sources

Real Madrid had their own scare. They beat Vasas of Budapest and then Odense of Denmark 12–0 on aggregate, with 9–0 at home. Juventus beat them in Madrid in the quarter-final, which went to a play-off in Paris that Real won 3–1. Standard Liège were brushed aside 6–0 over two legs in the semi-final.3 sources3 sources

Real started fast. Puskás scored in the 17th minute and again in the 23rd.2 sources2 sources

Benfica answered at once. José Águas, Benfica's captain, scored two minutes after the second goal, and Cavém equalised in the 34th minute. Four minutes later Puskás had his hat-trick, and Real went in 3–2 ahead.2 sources2 sources

The second half belonged to the younger, fitter team. Coluna equalised six minutes after the restart; RTP's archive account says the goal came from a free kick after Eusébio had been fouled.2 sources2 sources

In the 63rd minute Benfica got a penalty, and Eusébio scored it. Five minutes later he struck again for 5–3. Real Madrid, with Di Stéfano covering the whole pitch, could not get back into it. Record later called the final Eusébio's first great appearance and Di Stéfano's last.2 sources2 sources

The match went out live on television. The Olympisch Stadion's own history puts the audience at about a hundred million people, a figure impossible to check, and says some consider it one of the best football matches ever played.1 source1 source

Sources differ by a minute or two on most of the goals. The minutes above come from RSSSF's match details. UEFA's own record has Puskás at 18, 23 and 39, Cavém at 33, Coluna at 50 and Eusébio at 64 and 69, and RSSSF's season summary puts the penalty at 65.3 sources3 sources

A euphoric crowd met the team at Lisbon's airport. José Águas was first through the aircraft door and held the cup above his head. The Minister of Education and the Mayor of Lisbon were there to greet the captain, but the fans' eyes were on Eusébio.1 source1 source

The regime wanted its share. According to Record, the players and their coach were received by the President of the Republic, Américo Tomás, and by Salazar, who gave them decorations. Leaving the reception at São Bento, Guttmann is said to have whispered to the club's new president, Fezas Vital, that he would resign because he could not coach fourteen commendatori. They thought he was bluffing.1 source1 source

The win was expensive for the club. RTP's archive notes say Benfica paid 500 contos to the coach and 40 contos to each player for the Amsterdam title. A conto was 1,000 escudos; RTP converts the coach's bonus to about €209,000 in today's money.1 source1 source

Guttmann did not stay for a fourth season. “The third year is almost always fatal for a coach,” he said, by Record's account (translated from Portuguese). He left that summer and was succeeded by Fernando Riera. His later clubs included Peñarol in Uruguay and, in 1973–74, his last, FC Porto again.4 sources4 sources

What the quarrel was about depends on who tells it. Some accounts speak of a bonus the board would not pay, others of a pay rise refused, others of a coach who simply knew when to leave. Even the money he was owed is told differently.3 sources3 sources

Then there are the words. The best-known version, repeated by RTP and Record, has Guttmann promising that no Portuguese team would be European champions twice in a row for a hundred years, and that Benfica would never win the cup without him. Olympedia notes that some sources have “never” and others a hundred years.3 sources3 sources

Guttmann's own story was darker than the legend. He was Jewish, and in 1944, during the Nazi occupation of Hungary, his brother-in-law hid him in an attic in Újpest, north of Budapest. He later gave himself up, was sent to a forced-labour camp and escaped by jumping from a first-floor window. His father and sister were murdered. He never talked to his players about it, Simões said; they found out much later.1 source1 source

For decades it was believed that he had sat out the war in exile, in Switzerland by some accounts. The English writer David Bolchover, whose biography of Guttmann traced his hiding place, found otherwise. “Much of Europe wanted him dead and, 16 years later, he won Europe's biggest sporting competition,” Bolchover told Maisfutebol (translated from Portuguese).2 sources2 sources

The curse's reputation rests on what followed. Benfica reached the European Cup final again in 1963, 1965 and 1968, with Eusébio, and lost all three. It lost a UEFA Cup final in 1983 and two more European Cup finals in 1988 and 1990.2 sources2 sources

Before the 1990 final against AC Milan in Vienna, Eusébio went to Guttmann's grave in the Jewish section of the city's Central Cemetery and asked for the curse to be lifted. Frank Rijkaard scored the only goal of the final.1 source1 source

In 2013 Benfica lost the Europa League final to Chelsea in Amsterdam, the city of its last triumph, to a header by Branislav Ivanović in stoppage time. A year later Sevilla beat it on penalties in Turin. UEFA's report of that match counted a 52-year wait for a third European title, with eight losing finals along the way.2 sources2 sources

Amsterdam made Eusébio famous across Europe, and he finished second in the voting for the Ballon d'Or that year. It also gave the Estado Novo a star from Mozambique whose life story it could fold into its account of one Portuguese nation, just as the colonial wars began. Eusébio stayed out of politics in public; football, he liked to say, was his politics.3 sources3 sources

Fame also made him harder to sell. When Italian clubs came for him later in the decade, Salazar is said to have declared Eusébio a national treasure who could not leave; Domingos calls the remark alleged, and no written order has been found. He stayed at Benfica until after the 1974 revolution and reached three more European Cup finals with the club, losing them all.3 sources3 sources

For Benfica, the two European Cups of 1961 and 1962 are still the high point of its history, and the club marked the 60th anniversary of the second with an exhibition in 2022. Many supporters have laid each lost final since at Guttmann's door.3 sources3 sources