Dinamo Kyiv and USSR national team legend Jozsef Szabo shared little-known pages of his career in the national team in an exclusive interview with Sport RBC.UA. Playing for the national team gave him the opportunity to test his strength against the world's best footballers, but, according to him, this glory concealed a life under constant surveillance. Szabo, who played for the USSR national team from 1965 to 1972 and made 40 appearances with 8 goals, recalled both the dramatic episode of the 1966 World Cup semi-final and how security services controlled Soviet players during foreign tours.
“We Couldn't Go Anywhere on Our Own”
According to Szabo's recollections, international trips of the national team in those years were radically different from modern ones. “We were under constant surveillance and could almost never go anywhere on our own. During foreign tours, KGB representatives traveled with us to monitor the players. Today it's hard to imagine how limited a footballer's personal life was,” he said. Thus, even winning matches and encounters with the global football elite were accompanied by strict external control, which significantly restricted the personal freedom of the athletes.
Pressure on Kyiv Players
Szabo specifically noted that players from Kyiv in the USSR national team had a significantly harder time than their colleagues from capital clubs. In his estimation, preference in selection and lineup was always given to representatives of Moscow teams. In addition to this football pressure, players, according to Szabo, felt constant external control from Soviet intelligence services, which created a double burden for athletes who came to the national team from Kyiv.
1966 World Cup Semi-Final: The Fracture from Beckenbauer
The USSR national team reached the semi-finals at the 1966 World Cup, and Szabo associates this tournament with the greatest disappointment of the Mundial — a dramatic episode in the match against West Germany. “In the match against West Germany, I suffered a serious leg injury. I remember the episode with Franz Beckenbauer: I went into a slide tackle, he was jumping over me, but still stepped on my leg — and I got a fracture. Despite this, I played that match to the final whistle since substitutions did not exist back then, after which I could no longer take the field,” the footballer recalled. The absence of substitutions in the rules of that time deprived him of the opportunity to leave the pitch until the end of the match.
Path from Dinamo and National Team Statistics
In the interview, Szabo also commented on the reasons why he left Dinamo Kyiv at the time, explaining the motives for his departure from the club. The results of his performances for the national team sum up the scale of his career: eight seasons in the national team (1965–1972), 40 matches, and 8 goals. These figures, along with reaching the 1966 World Cup semi-final, secure Szabo's status as one of the key players of Soviet football of that period, whose personal memories help recreate the picture of an era in which sports and state institutions were inextricably linked.
