English teams enjoy a dramatic European comeback. Liverpool and Manchester United fans will argue until we are all dust whether 2005 or 1999 was more unlikely, more exciting or just simply better but years before those two was the day Wolverhampton Wanderers were “crowned” champions of the world.

The idea that England were unrivalled kings of football lasted for nearly the first century of the game’s existence and for at least the latter half of it this was a fib, a delusion. England gave football to the world but had problems letting go of it. Despite regularly losing to Scotland, Ireland and Wales in the early days of the Home Internationals, a staunch refusal to play in the early World Cups and then defeat by the USA when they did deign to compete in 1950, it took a pair of shellackings in the early 1950s to jolt the English out of the notion that they were the masters of this particular domain.

In November 1953 the brilliant Hungary side featuring Ferenc Puskas, Nandor Hidegkuti, Sandor Kocsis et al gave England “a severe lesson in the arts of Association Football”, according to Pat Ward-Thomas of the Guardian, describing the Mighty Magyars’ 6-3 victory at Wembley as “probably the finest exhibition of attacking play that has been seen in an international match in Britain.” Billy Wright, the England and Wolves captain, was infamously likened to “a fire engine going to the wrong fire” by Geoffrey Green in the Times, after having his knickerbockers firmly pulled down by Puskas in this most chastening of beatings. This was England’s first home defeat by “international” opposition but it was more than that: this was a destruction, an outclassing of such significant proportions that it could not be ignored. And then just to force the point home Hungary won the rematch in Budapest six months later 7-1.

That same year Wolves were celebrating a discovery of their own: the installation of floodlights at Molineux. They were not the first club to make such a radical addition to their ground (Arsenal had lights on one stand in the 1930s and The Dell was the first to have permanent floodlights in 1950) but they were perhaps the first to take full advantage of this relative novelty, only just approved by the Football Association. Wolves arranged a series of high-profile “international” floodlit friendlies, in which top foreign sides of the day were invited to the Midlands to play past everyone’s bedtime. A South African XI visited first and subsequent opponents included Celtic, Racing Club Avellaneda (the dominant Argentinian side of the late 1940s/early 1950s), Spartak Moscow and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Wolves prevailed in all of these friendlies, a 0-0 draw with First Vienna aside, particularly impressive in the 10-0 victory over Tel Aviv and a 4-0 defeat of Spartak, after which the Daily Record chuckled to themselves that the Russians had been “hammered and sickled”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Billy Wright and Ferenc Puskas lead the sides out before their historic meeting. Photograph: Colorsport/REX

However, the headline match of the series came on 13 December 1954, when the Hungarian titans Honved, featuring six of the side that so comprehensively taught England a lesson or two, were invited to face Wolves, who by this point were English champions under Stan Cullis. Honved had just won their fourth Hungarian league title, would go on to win a fifth and would surely have taken more had the team not been disbanded and scattered across Europe a few years later. In 1956 Honved travelled to a European Cup game in Bilbao but the team refused to return home after the collapse of the Hungarian Revolution and the invasion of Budapest by Soviet troops. They played the second leg on a neutral ground in Brussels, then existed as a nomadic touring team for a while but eventually most of the side, including Puskas, Kocsis and Zoltan Czibor, found new clubs, the first of course eventually joining Real Madrid and the latter two Barcelona.

The Wolves game was considered such an event that the BBC broadcast the second half live on television, a highly unusual occurrence at the time. Before that only FA Cup finals and a handful of experimental broadcasts (almost exclusively from London, for logistical reasons) were deemed worthy. Indeed, the rare televised game was particularly exciting in the household of one George Best, eight at the time, who was inspired to support Wolves after watching. “We didn’t have a telly ourselves, so when I knew there was a game on, I would go and kick a ball on the wall outside my neighbour’s house about 10 minutes before kick-off,” Best wrote in his autobiography. “He was a man called Mr Harrison and naturally he would hear me kicking the ball against the wall. He also knew I was a football nut. But he would let me sweat until just before the game started and would then open the door and say casually as though the idea had just come to him: do you fancy coming in and watching the game with me? I was in the house like a shot but the next time Wolves were on the television we would play the whole charade again.”

As perhaps an illustration of the game’s popularity, and in a foreshadowing of the sort of wrath irked members of the public can rain down on the media, the BBC received a number of complaints after the radio commentary of the game was prematurely “faded out” by an over-efficient continuity announcer. According to the Guardian, “hundreds of football enthusiasts, angered by the fade-out, hammered every telephone line to Broadcasting House for nearly half an hour”, and radio announcer Adrian Walker apologised to the listening public the following evening for the error. “I do realise I made a mistake,” said “a very repentant” Walker, “... and needless to say I shall be very wary of doing it again.” Imagine how the internet would have reacted to that one.

Despite the attention the game initially looked like being something of a non-event. Honved sashayed into a 2-0 lead by the 14th minute, a Puskas free-kick teeing up Kocsis to head in the first, the goalscorer then setting Ferenc Machos through to double the advantage. At that point it looked as if the extent of Wolves’ ambitions was to keep the score down, with the goalkeeper, Bert Williams, pulling off a number of fine saves (saves that would serve as inspiration to a 16-year-old Gordon Banks). However, after the early blitz Wolves edged their way back into the game, only to be frustrated by the Hungarians. “Wolverhampton gradually took command of the midfield play, but they could not find a clear path to goal,” reported the Guardian. “Still nothing went right for Wolverhampton in front of goal,” a point emphasised by a golden chance just before the break, as full-back Les Smith sliced an easy opportunity wide, leaving Honved still up at half-time. The teams came out for the second half “five minutes late”, noted a watch-tapping Guardian, although there was enough time for a rather quaint show of appreciation from the home crowd for Honved’s keeper Lajos Farago, who was given “a special cheer as he ran up to take his position, recognising his fine work in keeping Wolverhampton out in the exciting first half”.

From that point, though, the conditions began to take their toll, at least in part thanks to some slightly underhand tactics on the part of the hosts. In order to combat the brilliant Honved forward line Cullis wanted the Molineux pitch to be “nice and heavy”, so he dispatched some of his staff to water turf already sodden from four days of persistent rain. Those who trudged out, armed with watering cans, included Ron Atkinson, a Wolves apprentice at the time. “Honved came out to play in their short shorts and T-shirts with lightweight boots,” Atkinson said, years later. “They were 2-0 up in no time, playing delightful football. Wolves with their billowy shirts, long shorts and big heavy boots seemed so ponderous in comparison. Yet Honved slowly but surely began to get bogged down in the increasing mud and Wolves with their characteristic long-ball style gradually began to grind down the Hungarians ... There is no doubt in my mind that, had Cullis not ordered me and my mates to water the pitch, Honved would have won by about 10-0.” The Daily Mail described the pitch as “like a cattle ground at the end of a four-day show in the rain.”

As the visitors’ strength was sapped Wolves grew and stormed back into the game. Farago made two good saves before he was beaten in the 49th minute, Johnny Hancocks (the forward notable for being 5ft 4in tall and having size three feet) converting a penalty he won after going down rather easily from a push on the right side of the area. The pressure grew and grew, Honved defending “desperately” and were reduced to preventing one attack by nefarious means, when centre-half Gyula Lorant “brought a ball down with his hands to prevent [centre-forward Roy] Swinbourne breaking through the middle.” They were breached at last in the 75th minute, when Swinbourne rose to head home and a minute later the same player sealed the victory with an emphatic finish after being put clean through.

It was not just a triumph of a grit over skill, though. Puskas did little aside from set up the first goal, even forced to drift out to the left wing for a spell to look for some space, perhaps because of the magnificent performance by Wright. The Guardian called him a “tower of strength”, stopping the “occasional Honved thrusts down the middle and urging his men on to greater effort”. After his humiliation at the hands of the Magyars 13 months previously this was at least some redemption for the great defender.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A defeated Puskas (right) is congratulated as he leaves the pitch with Bert Williams and Eddie Stuart. Photograph: David Bagnall/REX

Cullis would tell a story that after the game, his assistant Joe Gardiner was talking to one of Honved’s coaches, who asked after where Wolves got a few of their players from, including Williams, Hancocks and winger Dennis Wilshaw. It so happened that all three had been recruited from Walsall, who finished second-bottom of Division Three South that year, prompting the coach to exclaim: “I’m glad we didn’t play Walsall tonight!”

This victory, along with the win over Spartak, was seized on by the English press, a sign that despite the dual beltings at the hands of the Hungarian national side, England still ruled the game. The Daily Express reckoned it proved English football was still “the genuine, original, unbeatable article ... still the best of its kind in the world”; the Daily Mirror ran with “Wolves the Great”; and the Daily Mail infamously dubbed Wolves “champions of the world”. This, for those still smarting from the national team giving England what for, was the real quiz.

The press from further afield were not so convinced. Gabriel Hanot, a former French international and editor of L’Equipe, wrote: “Before we declare that Wolverhampton are invincible, let them go to Moscow and Budapest. And there are other internationally renowned clubs: Milan and Real Madrid to name but two. A club world championship, or at least a European one – larger, more meaningful and more prestigious than the Mitropa Cup [a forerunner of the European Cup that featured only eastern and central European teams] and more original than a competition for national teams – should be launched.”

Hanot and other French journalists, notably Jacques Ferran who had travelled to South America and witnessed the Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones, the precursor to the Copa Libertadores, had been kicking the idea of a continent-wide tournament around for a few years, and Wolves’ victories seemed to jump-start the process. A Uefa congress in March 1955 proposed such a competition and the following season the European Cup was born.

In a fashion typical of English football’s parochialism of the time, English teams were not permitted to enter in the competition’s first year, champions Chelsea the team to miss out, only for the penny to drop in time for Manchester United to enter in 1956-57, when they reached the semi-finals. Wolves themselves played in the new competition twice, knocked out in the first round in 1958-59, then brutalised in the quarter-finals by Barcelona the following year. Indeed, in that tie Kocsis gained a chilled slice of revenge when he scored a hat-trick for Barça as they hoyed Wolves out of the competition, the treble coming in their 5-2 second leg win at Molineux, completing a 9-2 aggregate victory.

The 60th anniversary of the game is on Saturday, and the occasion is being commemorated by the Champions of the World Project, a scheme financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund and supported by the Wolves Museum and National Football Museum. An exhibition at Molineux was opened last weekend with Ron Flowers, who played for Wolves that night, Cullis’s son Andrew and Wright’s daughter Babette in attendance, displaying items such as the shirt goalscorer Swinbourne wore on the night. The plan is to create an oral history of the game, with people encouraged to share their memories of the match, from which a series of DVDs and a book will be produced. The exhibition will be running until the end of the season.

Every few weeks over the first half of any modern season, we can take our pick of 16 games a week to watch the best sides in Europe face each other. The ubiquity of such high-level football makes it tricky to gauge properly what impact a friendly 60 years ago could have but this was an event with such a rarity and mystique that it is remembered over half a century later.

With thanks to Mike Crump. If anyone has memories of the game they would like to share, please write to Mike at Our Voice CIC, Champions of the World Project, 29 Trident Drive, Langley Green, Oldbury, West Midlands, B68 8HW or email mikec.ourvoice@gmail.com