Zoltán Opata
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| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date of birth | 24 September 1900 | ||
| Place of birth | Budapest, Austria-Hungary | ||
| Date of death | 19 May 1982 (aged 81) | ||
| Place of death | Budapest, Hungary | ||
| Playing position | Forward, winger | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1917–1920 | Budapesti MÁVAG | ||
| 1920–1924 | MTK Budapest | ||
| 1924 | Maccabi Brno | ||
| 1924–1929 | MTK Budapest | ||
| 1929–1930 | Attila FC | ||
| 1930–1931 | Nemzeti SC | ||
| 1931–1932 | Bocskai FC | ||
| 1932–1933 | OSC Lille (?) | ||
| 1933 | MTK | ||
| 1934–1935 | Attila FC | ||
| 1935–1936 | AC Nitra | ||
| National team | |||
| 1922–1930 | Hungary | 17 | (6) |
| Teams managed | |||
| 1936 | Hungary | ||
| 1937–1938 | HAŠK | ||
| 1941–1945 | CFR Cluj | ||
| 1946–1947 | ITA Arad | ||
| 1947 | Ferencváros | ||
| 1950–1951 | Újpest FC | ||
| 1951 | Csepel SC | ||
| 1957–1958 | Górnik Zabrze | ||
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
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Zoltán Opata (also known as Zoltán Patai or Ormos Patai; 24 September 1900 – 19 May 1982) was a Hungarian football player and manager. As a player, he won six Hungarian league championships with Budapest-based powerhouse MTK in the 1920s and regularly appeared for Hungary national football team. After retiring from playing he became a manager and had successful spells with clubs in Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland.
Born in Budapest, Opata first began playing as a teenager at local minnows MÁVAG in 1917. Three years later he accepted an offer to join Hungarian powerhouse MTK, who had lost some of their strikers to foreign clubs in the previous two years. Opata immediately established himself as a regular member of a star-studded squad along with teammates György Orth, József Braun and Imre Schlosser. In the next five years between 1920 and 1925 MTK absolutely dominated the game and topped the Hungarian League every season, in addition to winning two Hungarian Cups.
Opata went on to spend the best part of the decade with MTK (bar a brief spell with the Slovak side Maccabi Brno in 1924), although in the latter part of the 1920s their fortunes began to change - their cross-city rivals Ferencváros TC won three consecutive titles between 1926 and 1928 and MTK only managed to win one more league title with Opata in 1929. That year he left MTK and had short spells with several smaller Hungarian sides, including the Miskolc-based Attila FC, Nemzeti SC and Bocskai SC in Debrecen and, according to some sources, he even spent the 1932–33 season at OSC Lille in France. He then returned to MTK briefly in 1933, and then signed for Attila FC again as player-manager in early 1934. Later that year he had in the same role at AC Nitra in Slovakia.
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