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The official website of the most famous Hungarian, one of the greatest footballers of all time
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Puskás wins online Legends World Cup!
23 Apr. 2016.
Ferenc Puskás has been announced as the winner of the online portal Goal.com's Legends World Cup. The online vote involving the readers of the world's most popular website lasted one week and saw 16 all-time world greats pitted head to head against each other with the public asked to vote for who was the better footballer overall.
70 million readers from more than 50 different countries regularly log on to London-based website Goal.com which compiled the list of 16 with the help of an international jury of experts. Puskás was drawn with Dutch striker Marco van Basten in the first round and in an extraordinarily tight contest only prevailed by six votes. The quarter-final was surprisingly much easier, the Hungarian great winning two-thirds of the vote against Argentinian maestro Diego Maradona. The semi-final pitted the Magical Magyar against another former Real Madrid great, current head coach Zinedine Zidane, the result again a clear victory with 55,000 votes in Puskás' favour meaning a 63% share of the vote (nearly 26,000 of the votes came from Hungary).
Puskás' final opponent was another Real Madrid star, current forward Cristiano Ronaldo who had narrowly defeated Lionel Messi in the other semi-final. The period during which votes could be cast for either of the two footballers commenced at 13:00 CET on 30th March and lasted 24 hours, the outcome being that Cristiano Ronaldo attracted 60,470 votes and Ferenc Puskás 131,993, our Hungarian hero thereby triumphing with 69% of the vote.
The spread of participant voters according to country paints a very interesting picture; understandably, the highest percentage of votes for Puskás arrived from Hungary and its neighbouring countries (Hungary 94% Puskás, 6% others, Slovakia 94-6, Romania 83-17, Austria 77-23, Serbia 76-24) but it was a nice surprise to see that more than two-thirds of voters from Great Britain and Ireland (68-32) preferred Puskás. Surprisingly Ronaldo garnered more votes in Greece and Australia (55-45), two of the countries where Puskás won league titles and coached with distinction, indeed taking Panathinaikos of the former to the 1971 European Cup final.
In every geographical area Puskás attracted at least a stable 35-40% of the vote with Europe clearly his strongest area. The greatest goalscorer of the 20th century won 53% of the final vote in Germany and 57% in Spain, while even in Argentina the percentage was 60% in the Hungarian's favour. Out of all the voter age groups, CR7 was only more popular than Puskás with the 0-12 age range. Overall, more than one million votes were cast during the tournament.
