Big Brawl in Bern

Neutral Switzerland has played host to many of history's most serious international wrangles, but none of them was as chockful of noisy discord as the international meeting which drew to a roaring close last week in Bern's Wankdorf Stadium. Before 55,000 wildly yelling fans, teams from 16 different countries wound up the international competition for the Jules Rimet Cup, the world's highest soccer prize.

Contested every four years, the Rimet Cup in prewar years used to travel between Latin America and Italy. In 1950 Brazil got into the finals but lost out to Uruguay. Brazil promptly went into a week of mourning. This year the Brazilians were out to cop the cup. The team they had to beat: the lithe and husky Hungarians, 1952 Olympic champions and the hottest team out of Budapest since the Gabor sisters.

Party Line. Hungary, once a limp wrist in international competition, climbed to prowess because the Sports Ministry in Budapest's postwar Communist regime has stuck sternly to the party line that a people's democracy ought to breed winners; the politicians ride herd on the sportsmen to whip them into smooth teamwork. State doctors from the Institute for Sport Hygiene check up on training, state coaches work overtime to turn out well-drilled scoring machines. The fine eleven beat Britain's best in Budapest last May, soon after breezed into Bern and swept easily into the quarter finals for the Rimet Cup. Last week the Hungarians came up against the supercharged Brazilians.

On a rain-drenched field, the purple-shirted Hungarians got off to a fast two-goal start. Then the game warmed up. A flying block by Hungary's Mihaly Lantos turned the game into a brawling, freestyle wrestling match. Toward the end of the game, Hungary's Joseph Bozsik (an M.P. in his spare time) started trading punches with Brazil's Newton Santos. Stubbornly impartial, English Referee Arthur Ellis threw both men out of the game. After that the two teams spent as much energy booting each other about the field as they spent on the ball. In the last few minutes, an enthusiastic Brazilian dropkicked Hungarian Back Gyula Lorant squarely into the nets for a field goal. It did not add to the score, heartwarming as the effort was, and Hungary won, 4-2.

Consolation Prize. The hot-tempered Latins did not take kindly to the defeat or the roughness. While Referee Ellis was rushing out of the stadium with a bodyguard of 20 Swiss police, a Brazilian player, as the Hungarians later told it, came forward to shake a friendly Hungarian hand. The two were still clasping hands when the Brazilian added a neat left to the chops. The Hungarian fell. The Brazilians insisted that it really began minutes before, when Hungarian Captain Ferenc Puskas hit Brazil's Joao Pinheiro in the face with a pop bottle. However it started, the fight swirled through the locker rooms, and players, spectators and officials got in licks with bottles, furniture, glass from shattered partitions and the toe-ends of good solid soccer boots. Swiss gendarmes surrounded the locker room, but for a while all they could do was keep out reinforcements. If it was any consolation, Brazil won the brawl, two casualties to six.

Later last week, the Hungarians patched up their hides, whipped Uruguay, the defending champions, 4-2, and took on West Germany in the finals. The Hungarians had already beaten the Germans (8-3) in the early rounds and figured to do it again. The unforgiving Germans figured otherwise. To almost unanimous surprise, Hungary's Olympic champions were licked, 3-2, and went back home with nothing but their bruises.

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