Yozhef Sabo

Yozhef Yozhefovich Sabo (; ; born 29 February 1940) is a Ukrainian former football player and manager.

Club career Sabo began to play in 1954 for a team of Uzhhorod bread factory and his first coach was Zoltan Gyorfi . Later until August 1957 he played as a forward for Khimik Kalush in competitions among KFK of the Ukrainian SSR. From September 1957 to May 1959 Sabo played in Class B (second tier) for Spartak Uzhhorod. He is baptized as a Greek-Catholic.

Sabo has his house near Verecke Pass (Carpathians) where he lives with his wife.

In a 2005 interview, he also said he had always wanted to coach the Hungary national team, but the Hungarian Football Federation leaders never made him a concrete offer.

In a 2015 interview, Sabo stated that the away game against Benfica in the 1991–92 European Cup, which Dynamo lost 5–0, was fixed.

He also mentioned that in Moscow he was called a fascist, because they knew that his father served in the Royal Hungarian Army during the World War II, and for which he was later sent to Siberia. His father, József Szabó, returned from imprisonment in 1948, very sick, and passed away in 1951. Eventually, Sabo started to study the Russian language after arriving in Kyiv with the help of a tutor. Sabo was offered to join the Komsomol and Communist Party but declined to explain that he could not be a communist and stay religious. After arriving in Kyiv, he continued to attend an underground Greek-Catholic service that took place in Sviatoshyn.

Sabo said that he became the only Ukrainian who received the medal from the 1966 FIFA World Cup, while at the same time, Valeriy Porkujan, who also played at the World Cup, was left without it. When the Soviets beat Hungary in the quarterfinals, Sabo was forced to hear all kinds of sentiments from his former compatriots. Sabo also explained that the reason why he refused to travel to Hungary with the Soviet Union national team for the quarter-final game was that he tried to finish his journalism degree at Kyiv University. The Soviet team then qualified without Sabo, but he was disqualified.

In 1970, after a short stint in Luhansk, Sabo, for a couple of months, was working as a sports correspondent of the Ukrainian newspaper "Pravda Ukrainy".

In 1960, when Dynamo was playing an away friendly against FC Bayern Munich, Sabo said that he was approached by Bayern's goalie Árpád Fazekas who offered him to remain in Munich.

International goals No. Date Venue Opponent Score Result Competition 1. 17 October 1965 Copenhagen, Denmark 3–0 3–1 1966 FIFA World Cup qualification 2. 16 July 1967 Tbilisi, Soviet Union 2–0 4–0 UEFA Euro 1968 qualifying 3. 6 September 1967 Turku, Finland 1–0 5–2 4. 4–2 5. 8 September 1972 Augsburg, West Germany 4–0 4–0 1972 Summer Olympics

Honours

Player Dynamo Kyiv Soviet Top League: 1961, 1966, 1967, 1968 Soviet Cup: 1964, 1965–66

Dynamo Moscow European Cup Winners' Cup runner-up: 1971–72

Manager Dynamo Kyiv Vyshcha Liha: 1993–94, 1994–95, 1995–96, 1996–97 Ukrainian Cup: 1995–96, 2004–05

Orders Order of Merit, a full cavalier of the order 3rd degree (15 October 1999) 2nd degree (12 October 2004) 1st degree (1 December 2011)