WOW! Did you know that Maradona’s first coach was Hungarian?
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Only a few know that one of the first coaches of the Argentine football star, “The hand of God”, Diego Maradona, was a Hungarian. Elemér Bánki worked with Maradona at the beginning of his career.
According to Blikk, Maradona, whose family was poor, could start to play in Argentinos, his first football club, with the help of one of his friends. Elemér Bánki worked there and started to train the kid whose quickness and dribbling skills were already remarkable. Diego won the cup with his first adolescent team and started to play in the adult team when he turned 15. Interestingly, he went out on the field in the shirt of the national team when he was only 16 and
played his first, friendly match with Hungary, like Lionel Messi.
Elemér Bánki wrote a lot of books in Argentina about football. He arrived there from Israel in 1959 because WWII ended his football career. He worked as a coach for a lot of clubs, including the youth team of Boca Juniors.