Andras Torocsik has died: he played two World Cups for Hungary

Soccer loses one of its great protagonists of the 1970s and 1980s.

At the age of 67, Andras Torocsik died. ‘Nemzeti Sport’ first broke the news, then after the family confirmed it, the Hungarian Football Association also paid its last respects to a striker who entered the history of Magyar soccer.

Indeed, Andras Torocsik had played two World Cups for Hungary, in Argentina 1978 and Spain 1982, in both cases wearing the number 9 jersey of the national selection. At the club level, however, he had spent much of his career in his homeland, playing for Ujpesti Dozsa over eleven seasons, and then for Volan and MTK Budapest. On this side of the Iron Curtain he played instead for Montpellier, France.

He left the Hungary national team in 1984, with 45 appearances and 12 goals to his credit, and soccer in 1989. Gifted with great class and an over-the-top technical level, as ‘Telex’ recalls, he considered himself more gifted than even Diego Maradona. His lifestyle prevented him from achieving his successes, but it equally allowed him to become a soccer legend of those years. Ill for some time, fatal for him was pneumonia.