Heroes of the past: Zoltán Kásás
The next protagonist of our series was part of an undefeated Olympic silver medal, winning the first world championship title, but also that he was strangely left out of the national team at the peak of his successful era. The fantastic successes of his son Tamás more than compensated for all of this, just as the 12 years he spent on the bench of the national team as Dénes Kemény's assistant, after all, his captaincy in the eighties and the injustices meted out to him in the coaching field could even have embittered him. Although his qualities are also proven by two BL victories - but it is no coincidence that he achieved them with foreign clubs (Olympiacos, Becej).
It might seem logical right away to start the conversation with water polo, but after doing preliminary research, it immediately became apparent that his place of birth was Alpár. Where is this settlement located and what does it mean to you today?
Mostly the fact that I was born there in the fall of 1946, however, since our classic family life was quickly turned upside down due to my parents' divorce, so not much more. My birthplace is located between Lakitelek and Kiskunfélegyháza - it is famous only because Vörösmarty mentions the field of Alpár in the run of Zalán. I spent a lot of time there with my maternal grandparents as a child, and I did my first strokes in the backwaters of the Tisza, namely in dog swimming. That's where my career started. I quickly avoided Alpár, all the more so because my dance teacher grandfather was declared a kulak. One step later, my mother went from being a musician to a turner...
And you "enjoyed" all the features of the fifties...
Those were hard times, 1956- until especially. As an only child, my mother was very afraid, she settled in Alpár, but Russian tanks also appeared on the main street there. After that, my life was clearly spent in Budapest. We lived in Nagyenyed utca, I went to primary school in Márvány utca, from where they once took us to the Margitsziget swimming pool, where I couldn't swim the fifty meters. To my surprise, the old coach of Újpest, dr. Henrik Técsői, the doctor uncle, came to where I was hanging on and invited me to training the next day. I really don't know what he saw in me, because I didn't even dare to jump head first. The turning point came after a few training sessions, because my mother, who loves sports, regularly swims, and is a huge Fradi-drucker, said that it would not be good if I went swimming with the people from Újpest. He obtained protection from somewhere with Gyuri Gerendás's father, Uncle Laci, and he also recommended me there. Fortunately, the Dózsa has not been approved yet, and with this start-up I ended up spending two decades in green and white.
Like your teammates, you started as a swimmer.
I only swam for two years, the second two years were "mixed". In addition to swimming, in the third season I spent Sundays with uncle "Csirke" - he happened to be Gyuri Kárpáti's father. I don't remember what kind of swimming I was allowed to start in my first competition in 50 meters, but I still vividly remember that there I met dr. Bárány with Uncle Pista, who swam for the first time in Europe in the 100 breaststroke in under one minute. He had rare lexical knowledge and a good dose of humor. Many years later, we often ran into each other on the corner of Vérmező, and these conversations began at quarter past three.
As he mentioned, he has been keeping track of the swimmer's results since 1959.
Let me quickly add: there was not much to record. At the national youth championship, I finished sixth in the 100 IM, while in the 4x200 IM I was the fourth member with the slowest time in Fradi, where we received bronze medals. This is my success list, it's really not long...
The results of the swimmer did not particularly hold him back from trying water polo.
For a while, I made friends with the ball on Sundays, and then Uncle Laci Gerendás once told me to go to the polo players for training instead. That's how I became a water polo player. The floating foundations came in very handy, I slowly got used to them. In 1965, Pisti Szívós and I already won the youth championship, while I also got a chance to play a quarter of a game in the senior team. I consider it very lucky that I was among the adults in Fradi, where five Olympic champions (Dezső Gyarmati, György Kárpáti, Miklós Ambrus, Antal Bolvári and László Felkai) played. Among them, many things "stuck" on people, they took them with them, never pushed them down, always helped them. I can call myself lucky, every training was a great experience for me.
How big a role did luck play in your life?
You can't just base it on luck, there has to be something else. Benedek Tibi, for example, said that it was thanks to his diligence that he became a world class player. Another player got an extra talent. Such was the case, for example, with my son Tamás, who warmed himself up on land with his hands in his pockets. If anyone, it meant a lot to him that he got out to Italy at a young age, where he could absorb the professional spirit. He had a fantastic, intelligent coach at Posillipo, Paolo di Crescenzo, when he won his first BL final with him, Tamás was chosen as the best of the tournament. This start really "threw" him.
Hungarian water polo has always had extra classics.
Well, it is difficult to even list them. Gyuri Kárpáti was also good in terms of talent, as he could have already been an Olympic champion at the age of 17. Although little has always been said about him, for example I include László Felkai, who had a fantastic shot. Tamás Faragó also joined the squad at a young age, after uncle Béla Rajki called him up and confirmed the correctness of the decision. For me, it was Laci Sárosi who played the most modern water polo. Laci was everything in one person, an absolute multidimensional world class. The goalkeeper Endre Molnár became one of the best in the world from the second division, Dudi Csapó stepped forward from a swimmer. Many great talents appeared, but many also disappeared in the sinkhole. There have also been bad examples in football of geniuses not reaching where they should have reached. I would mention Törőcsik and Varga Zoli from this category.
Where do you classify yourself?
I wasn't talented, but I was diligent, I worked hard. I was also lucky to the extent that, as a left-hander, I had to prove myself against much smaller competition.
How did you manage to get into the national team - among so many talents?
The first honor came in 1966: I was invited by Kálmán Markovits, and I went through the baptism of fire against England in London, but I still didn't make it to Mexico City (1968). Uncle Béla Rajki came in 1969, and I was already able to play in the 1970 European Championship silver medalist team. With our extremely young team, I thought we would be in seventh place. In the end, we were able to fight the Russians in the final and only lost by a goal.
. It was a horrible feeling then, I don't really know what was behind it. Uncle Béla believed that second place was already a failure and withdrew. Dezső Gyarmati and Gyurika Kárpáti arrived, and the gold medal at the first ever world championship in Belgrade, which never needs to be explained. This was the medicine for us, which was supplemented by the 1974 European Championship victory in Vienna.In 1975, however, he was no longer included in the team preparing for the World Cup in Colombia.
Strange things happened there: I was kicked out, then Dezső called me back a few days later, he also promised the Olympics, and then asked: would I accept a farewell match? I can get over this disappointment by adding that I believe I was in my best shape in 1975. Perhaps precisely because I already guessed from the train that I would stay at home and this freedom was good for my performance. In later years, it also became clear to me that I subordinated my game too much to my current team. At the age of thirty, I realized without any outside help how to shoot better than before. At that time, I accepted the invitation of the second division Tatabánya, and somewhat unexpectedly, we won the championship in the very first season. After eight years at Tata, out of a desire for adventure, I went to Australia, where I ended my active career as a player coach in February 1985 with a 15-month guest appearance.
From then on came the decades spent in coaching. What were the most important principles that you incorporated into your work at all costs?
It is an important background that I was able to develop as a player under the hands of excellent coaches. In Ifi, for example, with Károly Szittya, who had an extraordinary passing repertoire, which not many people use today, but I also used this weapon as a coach. Or there was Illés Goór at Fradi - he was István, but everyone called him Illés - who held sessions quite different from his other colleagues. For example, he introduced blocking, which he took over from the basketball players. I really liked Gyarmati's training sessions, which give a serious place to instinctual intuitions; he was a brilliant person both as a player and as a coach. As for these many special experiences, if you put them all together, good things can come out of it. Discipline was a very important factor for me. It is a basic requirement that the team is always more important than the individual! It is very important for people to feel: how long can even the greatest class player be let go, and when is the moment when he is at the expense of the team. It is important that one assesses what can realistically be expected from the given stock at the beginning. And that the players should not be uniformed. You also have to take into account that if you win on the weekend, it will be easier to train the following week and vice versa. If you have a helper, your job is easier than without one. Every coach has his own ideas, but if something doesn't go well, instead of putting in more effort, you have to learn the lessons in time. It matters a lot what and how you perform, it's a separate genre.
Looking back, when did you feel that this was my most successful season, regardless of the result?
Again, this depends on a number of factors, all of which can influence a better or less successful outcome. For example, I was in Szeged in the early nineties, where the staff was not bad, but the results did not come - I came a year later. Later, I also went to Fradi, but I didn't really manage to realize what I had imagined there either. I was invited to Vasas after I won the Champions League with Olympiakos. It was a very difficult undertaking, since the rival Honvéd had been preparing and playing together for several years, and at Vasas I only had 8-9 months to catch up with Honvéd. One quarter of stupidity kept us out of the Final Four and I feel like that affected the championship playoffs as well. Where my operation was clearly successful and rich in experience was at Olympiakosz and Becej. In both places, we won two championships and two cups each, two BLs and one European Super Cup - just against Vasas.
Would you also mention a negative example?
Why not, this is also among the possibilities. At Jadran Split, for example, they got fired as they should. In the two years before my arrival, the team was ranked 5th. When I was sent off, we were one point behind the leaders Mladost Zagreb, but they sent me off. By the way, the management "consumed" five coaches in Split in three years. I had different experiences in Sicily, for example, where I coached Ortigia Siracusa. The once world-famous football referee, Lo Bello, was the big boss - he was like a dictator. My players there were the captain, Sandro Campagna, who has been working at the world level for at least ten years, and the second center of the national team, Paulo Caldarella, who died in a motorcycle accident. Even though I asked for more training time, because I felt that the given opportunity would be few, there was no change. However, when the hoped-for breakthrough failed, they tipped elegantly. I've been down and up, basically I don't miss anything. It could have been more or less. A person realizes many things, and if he has sufficient self-criticism, he also discovers what he should have done differently. I am very lucky that my possible sense of absence was amply compensated by the successes of my son Tamás - and, of course, that I was able to see most of them up close, since, for example, during the 2004 and 2008 Olympic successes, I was able to work with Dénes (Kemény) as a second coach.
Would you name any players with whom you had an exemplary relationship?
I can talk about such things in relation to foreigners. With the Greeks, for example, the team captain, Themis Hatsis, voluntarily introduced me to all the players after my arrival: who and what I can expect from them. This was a fantastic help for me, as it significantly shortened the period of getting to know each other. I was able to work in excellent harmony with almost everyone at Becej. At home, I must first mention Benedek Tibi's obsession, but practically everyone in Dénes Kemény's team is similar to him. As for my former teammates, I probably talk to Tibi Cservenyák the most.
And of course, let's not forget that you were also the national team captain, although you may not have very fond memories of that.
Yes, between 1987 and 1989 I was able to prepare our national team, we came fifth at the Seoul Games, but at the 1989 European Championship in Bonn we only got to ninth place - I resigned immediately on the spot. Previously, we finished third at the World Cup, but lost to Czechoslovakia at the European Championship. It was a horrible experience, but even then I confessed: you have to be able to endure both success and failure.
Later, the results came with the Greeks and the Serbians, so that they appeared again with the national team.
Dénes and I got to know each other well during the years in Tatabánya, he asked me to join him when he was elected captain in 1997. We worked together for twelve years, and for six years I didn't travel anywhere because Tamás was stressed by my presence. In the meantime, I constantly pushed twice as hard, because I was worried for the team and for Tamás, that things would go well for them. I was with the national team for three years as well as the second division team Hódmezővásárhely. However, after Beijing - in 2009 - I signed a three-year contract with Szeged, where winning the LEN Cup was our best result, followed by two third-place finishes in the championship. We also agreed in the fourth year, and then a month later they announced: I'm not the coach after all. This "solution" also happened at Vasas! A coach in Hungary has to expect something like this. Instead, he was invited to Saudi Arabia, and before the London Olympics, he was invited to join the English national team. Finally, I was there at my sixth Olympics, where I could watch the polo matches without any pressure to prove myself.
So that in 2013 they would get together again with Dénes Kemény.
That's when we got into coaching. First, we conducted a two-year tournament three times within the framework of the federation, then in 2019 we continued on the TF. Lately, I'm starting to make friends with the idea of ending, after all, I'm about to turn 78.
Whether he finishes it or continues to work on it is still an open question. Regardless, the T-shirt events of the Paris Olympics are sure to keep him busy. What can we expect, what can we expect?
Without making predictions, looking at things from a professional point of view, it is definitely worth mentioning that in recent years, our age-group national teams have consistently achieved better results at the youth level. We have a lot of very talented young people, to whom our captain Zsolt Varga also reached out with a good hand. There are five teams in the field in Paris (Serbia, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Hungary), any of which can win the Olympics. And then I haven't mentioned the Greeks, who have been very dangerous for years. You shouldn't predict either, because the rival teams are so similar that each clash will be decided at critical moments, on the smallest nuances. In my opinion, the three-time Olympic champion Hungarian national team played their best in Athens in 2004, but the Serbians still led 7-5 until the 50th second of the third quarter. They couldn't score another goal from there, so it was 8-7 in our favor. At the 2012 London Olympics, this shade was not in our favor, just as it was not at the European Championship after the World Cup victory. Due to the increased balance of power, the five or six contenders, the tournament will be particularly interesting, but also dangerous for us!
Károly Jocha
