Scary story: The curse of the Jewish coach who caught the European giant

Bella Gutman was former football player and well-known coach from Hungary. Because of his Jewish background, he had been deported by the Nazis to concentration camps, but he survived the Holocaust. Even before being deported, he had been known in his country as a Wypest coach.

Among the known teams, he managed Milan from 1953 to 1955, Sao Paulo in Brazil, Porton and Benfican in Portugal and Panathinaikos in Greece.

In all, it has managed teams in Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, Romania, Italy, Argentina, Cyprus, Brazil, Uruguay, Switzerland and Greece.

But he achieved his greatest successes with Benfik, with which he had won Portugal's league twice and had been declared European champion twice too.

And right at his first stay in Benfik he realized one of the most famous curses in football history, writes Periscope.

After winning the European Cup Final for the second time in 1962 [Today's Champions League economist], Guttman is said to have approached the Board of Benfik's directors to demand wage growth. Despite their successes, however, they had refused. Later, he had left the club complaining, “either in a hundred years from now, Benfica will not be European champion”

Benfica has since lost all eight finals in European competitions, including five in the Champions League [1963, 1965, 1988 and 1990] and three in Europe League/Wefa Cup [1983, 2013 and 2014].

Before the 1990 final, played in Vienna [the city where Guttman was buried], Portuguese legend Benfica Eusebius had gone and prayed to remove the curse. But this had not happened. /Periscopi