Vitória SC vs SL Benfica 2004: The tragic passing of Miklos Fehér

Tomorrow evening Vitória host Benfica in the Portuguese Primeira Liga. It is a fixture that always brings back poignant memories of a heartbreaking night in 2004.

It wasn’t the first time it happened but it was the first time everyone saw it live. The moment that scarred an entire generation of football supporters, regardless of what club colours they lived and died for.

The innocent smile before the tragic end. Miklos Fehér was never going to be a massive star, but he was a well-loved player who had cut his teeth in Portuguese football when he was still a teenager.

His tragic death, near the end of the football match that pitched Benfica against Vitória in Guimarães, united a nation in grief and became one of Portugal’s most painful collective memories. 

 

Emigrant at an early age

When he first arrived in Portugal, Fehér was only 18. Born in Tatabánya in what was still then communist Hungary, in 1979, he started to play in his teens for Gyori ETO, becoming one of the most talked about future prospects of Hungarian football.

Once Europe’s most powerful nation on the pitch, the birthplace of many managers who changed the nature of how the game was played, massively influential worldwide and with a special focus in Portugal, Hungary had since sunk low. Their last greatest side had played in the 1960s, while they were last seen in an international tournament in 1986 when Fehér was only seven. They lacked quality players or managers to look up to, so many of their best prospects moved abroad very early in their careers to make a name for themselves.

Fehér was scouted by Porto who had made good use of the economic distress of the former communist states in the 1990s. They had brought in the likes of Emil Kostadinov and Ion Timofte, two key players in their title-winning seasons in the first half of the decade, and also Polish striker Grzegorz Mielcarski. Fehér was brought in following that trend and was seen in the same mould as the Pole, a tall poacher who could provide quality in the air and support the side’s main striker, the Brazilian icon Mário Jardel.

A talent on the up – but not at Porto

However, Fehér was still young and Fernando Santos, the newly appointed Porto manager, soon saw in him potential but also a need to grow up as a footballer. It would be hard to do so with so few match minutes available to him as Jardel was irreplaceable so, despite having a 1998/99 championship winning medal – the Penta season – he started the season playing for the B side and was then loaned to neighbours Salgueiros for the rest of the campaign. At Vidal Pinheiro, he became a much-loved figure and many of the quality traits Porto scouts had detected earlier on started to flourish. He scored seven goals in the half-season he played for Salgueiros, helping the club to avoid the drop by a single point.

Many expected him to come back to das Antas to reclaim his place, especially with Jardel now sold to Galatasaray, but once again Santos wasn’t convinced so, like so many players of his day, he was loaned out once again, this time to Sporting Braga. Up north he enjoyed his best season ever, scoring 14 goals in 26 matches for the Arsenalistas, allowing the club to finish fourth, their best result in years. 

Refusal to swap agents leads to Porto exit

For anyone following Portuguese football at the time it was clear that the Hungarian striker had earned himself at least the possibility of a trial with Porto’s first team for the 2001/02 season. With Fernando Santos out, in came Octávio Machado. The club was lacking a goal-scoring figure since Jardel left but then Fehér became the victim of the ill-character of Porto’s iconic leader, Pinto da Costa.

It was usual at the time for the Dragões president to cut off any relationship with certain football agents if they didn’t act according to his wishes. The figure of the football agent was gaining relevance in the game and Pinto da Costa surrounded himself with key figures over the years and always tried to force the club’s players to sign with the agent that was closer to him at each moment. When the time came for Fehér to renegotiate his contract with a clear prospect of becoming a first-team player, Porto demanded that he drop the agent who had worked with him since the beginning of his football career, to enrol with one of the club’s favourites. The Hungarian said no in a way that Pinto da Costa simply wasn’t used to. The striker was punished, forced to play the final season of his contract with the B side before moving as a free agent to Porto’s greatest rivals, Benfica, who immediately took the opportunity to sign him as an exciting prospect and to simultaneously attack Pinto da Costa with the move. 

Finding his feet at Benfica

Fehér thus became a pawn in a much bigger war and it is likely that all that tension eventually affected him. The chaos Benfica were in at the time didn’t help either, and he only scored four goals in his first season at the Estádio da Luz. In 2003/04, with José António Camacho now as head coach, he played 19 matches as a striker for the Águias, and by January, he had scored the same number of goals as in the entire previous season. Benfica were challenging Porto’s Mourinho for the title and would eventually beat the Dragons in the Cup final but when they arrived at Guimarães, they still lagged behind in the league table and couldn’t afford to drop any points. Even if they were facing one of the toughest away trips in the league.

Cold night, big crowd

It was a late Sunday night kick-off. The Dom Afonso Henriques ground, set to host several Euro 2004 matches in the months ahead, was fully packed with both hardcore local fanatics and a strong Benfica contingent as usual whenever the Lisbon side came to the Minho region. It was cold, as expected for 25 January, and both sides needed a win to keep their campaign’s hopes alive.

Jorge Jesus was then the Vitória SC coach, his first big role as a manager in Portugal, and he had a side that played flair, attacking football. Romeu, Guga, Afonso Martins, Nuno Assis, Rúben Junior and Flávio Meireles were key from the middle onwards while Rogério Matias, Abel Ferreira – now the Palmeiras manager – Cléber and Bruno Alves, a loanee from FC Porto, defended Jerome Palatsi’s goal. A handful of attractive names for a side that had a special emotional push when playing at home.

Despite coming from Spanish football Camacho surely knew what to expect. Perhaps that was why that night Benfica came fortified at the back. Moreira was in goal, as usual, but the former Real Madrid star opted to play three right-backs in Armando, João Pereira and Miguel, alongside Ricardo Rocha and Argel as centre-backs, with international stars Petit, Tiago and Simão Sabrosa offering support to former Guimarães idol Zlatko Zahovic and Tomislav Sokota. Fehér was on the bench that night and had to watch from the dugout as a hard-fought match ensued with neither side seemingly able to get a grip over the opponent for more than an hour.

Fehér enters the fray

Tied at the break, with Vitória having the better chances, Fehér came on in the 59th minute to replace João Pereira as Camacho decided to go back to the usual plan of having two strikers up front. Things got messy, Vitória nearly scored, and the Spaniard decided to replace Zahovic with defensive midfielder Fernando Aguiar, minutes later. Still, it seemed a goalless draw was in order when the 90th minute came. It was then that Fehér proved decisive.

It had been raining heavily and the pitch was by then soaked and muddy. Benfica launched an attack with Fehér winning the long ball, allowing Tiago to open on the left for Simão. The skipper crossed over the line and the ball fell to Miki’s feet. He shot for goal but the damp pitch slowed it down and allowed Aguiar to collect it and divert it into the net. As expected, Benfica players and supporters went crazy with that last-minute goal that kept them alive in the title race and, as expected, no one in the Águias side wanted anything to happen during the three added minutes. Wasting time was in order. 

Fateful smile

In the 92nd minute, Fehér positioned himself over the line denying Vitória a quick thrown-in. Inevitably, he was booked. He knew what he had done and smiled back at the referee, knowing that there were only a few seconds before the final whistle. Then, as he smiled and turned his back, Miki fell to the ground. Everyone around him came running desperately, even if the majority of the players were far away, near Benfica’s goal. When some arrived at Fehér’s side, tears started to sprout from their eyes. It was serious stuff, and all were aware of the gravity of the situation.

The medical staff were already running towards him but they had to cross the whole pitch just to get there. In those eternal seconds at home people could begin to imagine something was badly wrong. Benfica players had their hands covering their heads by that time. They knew Fehér was already likely dead. In the stands nobody understood anything that what was happening. Benfica supporters still chanted, and Vitória followers whistled because they believed it was just another time-wasting manoeuvre from the visitors.

Fans confused; TV viewers shocked

On the television the last moments of the Hungarian’s life were repeated over and over. That mischievous and shy smile, followed by a sudden, slow and inexplicable collapse. There was no medical equipment at hand for the medical staff to try to reanimate the player, and the ambulance was nowhere to be seen – despite the ground being right around the corner from the local hospital – as the minutes passed by. Then, the stadium erupted in a shared chant as rival players embraced. They shouted for Fehér, mainly because they believed he had somehow regained conscience. Only, he hadn’t. The player was transferred minutes later to the local hospital and pronounced dead.

It was, after Pavão’s passing in a Porto match against Vitória de Setúbal thirty years earlier, the most tragic moment in the history of Portuguese football. The time was 9.30 pm. Miklos Fehér was 24.

Fehér’s death deeply touched all who followed Portuguese football, not to mention the anguish back home in Hungary. The player was granted homage by the club at the Estádio da Luz and was then buried back home. Benfica’s title hopes were finished off weeks later although they eventually won the Cup and the squad was able to dedicate the win to the memory of their former teammate. 

United in grief

Even Porto, who had ended up colliding with the player after he signed for Benfica on a free transfer, presented their respects with vice-president Reinaldo Teles and the then club manager José Mourinho travelling to Lisbon the following day. He passed away because of a heart condition that had not been detected in the pre-season medical tests, something that forced a debate on how well players were assessed medically during their playing careers. Marc-Vivien Foé, the Cameroon international, had also passed away months before in a similar fashion and many believed the game was still falling short in guaranteeing the players had all the right tools to escape a fatal ending such as those.

Since then, almost a hundred players over the past twenty years have lost their lives playing or in training, many due to underlying medical conditions that have gone undetected. Still, the science within the sport evolved and many others were notified in time, being able to retire from the game or get the right treatment to be able to keep on competing. Benfica never again allowed players to wear the Hungarian’s No29 shirt. His memory lingers on in the soul of Portuguese football. A final smile to remind us all of what really matters in the end.

By Miguel Lourenço Pereria, author of “Bring Me That Horizon – A Journey to the Soul of Portuguese Football”.