Under the stewardship of
Gusztáv Sebes, Hungary had been unbeaten since May 1950, and had won the
1952 Olympics in
Helsinki. They were rated the number one team in the world by
FIFA and were firm favourites for the
1954 World Cup. England were rated the number four team in the world by FIFA, but were still existing in a climate of complacency;
the Football Association (FA) saw their country as the originators of the game and assumed English players were technically and physically superior to their foreign counterparts. Coaching and tactical advances from abroad were ignored, in the England national side and the majority of clubs persisting with the outdated
WM formation. Manager
Walter Winterbottom had no prior managerial experience in professional football, and did not pick the England squad: that role remained with the FA's selection committee, who frequently displayed little or no consistency in their choice of player. Hungary had visited England in 1953 and delivered a 6–3 thrashing at
Wembley—the first time a foreign team outside the
British Isles had beaten England on home soil. The result had sent a shockwave through English football, with several prominent managers and players such as
Matt Busby,
Don Revie,
Bill Nicholson and
Ron Greenwood realising that the English game had to adapt if the national team was to compete at the highest levels. The FA on the other hand viewed the defeat as a "one-off", and retained Winterbottom and an outdated WM formation for the return game in Budapest. ==Build-up==