Zoltán Opata (also known as Zoltán Patai or Ormos Patai; 24 September 1900 – 19 May 1982) was a Hungarianfootball player and manager. As a player, he won six Hungarian league championships with Budapest-based side 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 club 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; MTK won only one other 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.
His first appearance for Hungary national team came in April 1922 when he played as a right winger in a friendly against Austria which ended in a 1–1 draw, and his first goal came in 7–1 win against Italy in April 1924. That same year Opata was selected for the Hungary squad which competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris,[1] where they were considered one of the favorites of the tournament. In the first round they trashed Poland 5–0 with Opata scoring a brace. However, in their second round match Hungary suffered a sensational 0–3 defeat to underdogs Egypt which ended their hopes of winning Olympic medals.
Opata continued to be a regular member of the national team until for the next three years and was used by managers in all positions in the attacking line, appearing in a total of 17 matches and scoring 6 goals between 1922 and 1927. After that period he was called up only once, three years later in the last game of the 1927–30 Central European International Cup against Italy in Budapest which they went on to lose 0–5.
Coaching career
As Opata had already started working as a player-manager in the mid-1930s he immediately took up coaching after his playing career had ended around 1935. He first managed Hungary at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin where they got knocked out in the first round by Poland.
