Hungary’s football team qualifies for EURO 20
November 17th, 2020Two critics of the government admit that they are elated by the unexpectedly fine performance of the national team and believe that their critics within the opposition are wrong.
After long years marked by painful defeats, including one against lowly Andorra, the Hungarian national soccer team has qualified for EURO 2020, the European Championship postponed to next year because of the coronavirus pandemic. One of the stadiums in use will be Budapest’s new Puskás Arena, where Hungary will face some of the best teams of the world in the group stage, namely Germany, Portugal and France.
On 444, Péter Ujj expresses his joy at the feat of the national team which beat Iceland last week to qualify for the Championship. He criticises fellow opposition supporters who scorn people like him, because football is the Prime Minister’s favourite sport and the opposition is convinced that the hundreds of billions spent on football stadiums and football academies are a waste of public money. Ujj takes the players one by one, and proves that only one of them is an alumnus of one of the new football academies. At any rate, he concludes, people who are proud of the achievement of their compatriots are not necessarily supporters of the incumbent government. He himself is surely not one.
On Azonnali, Gábor Balogh rejects the idea that the successes of Hungarian football are a result of government policies. Hungary’s first goal against Iceland, he writes, was scored by an immigrant who became a professional football player in France, while the author of the second plays in Austria. He also criticises those among the opponents of the government who believe that rooting for the national team is equivalent to expressing gratitude to the government. There must be things we have in common, regardless of our political positions, he writes.