Football: absolutely loves it. Credit: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/ Getty
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Today Portugal will face Hungary at the Ferenc Puskas Arena in Budapest in front of 60,000 fans. It’s the only venue being used at Euro 2020 that, in the group stage at least, will be at full capacity. Everywhere else, Covid restrictions mean limited attendance. But not in Hungary, not for its prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
Orbán’s love of football is unfeigned. He played for the youth team of Videoton, a club based in Székesfehérvár about 20 miles south-west of his home village of Felcsút, who reached the Uefa Cup final in 1985. His first foreign trip as prime minister was to the World Cup final in 1998 and he has been a regular at major finals ever since. It’s said that there are days when he watches as many as six matches — he played the game, he loves the game, and he dreams of returning Hungary to the glories of the early 50s, when it could realistically claim to be the greatest football team in the world.
The end for Hungary as a great football nation came with the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Uprising. Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis and Zoltan Czibor, three key members of the great side that had taken Olympic gold in 1952, reached the World Cup final in 1954 and twice hammered England, defected and moved to Spain. The Under-21 squad, who had been in Geneva when Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest, didn’t go home. And it turned out that the brilliance of the Aranycsapat — the Golden Team — had disguised an underlying mounting crisis within the Hungarian game.
Hungarian football had boomed in the years after the First World War, the vacant lots of the rapidly expanding capital proving fertile ground for a lingering British cultural influence and the coffee-house intellectuals who became fascinated by football. During the decades that followed, economic and political turmoil led to a great diaspora of players and coaches, who had a profound influence on the development of the game, in Italy particularly, but also in Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Yugoslavia, France, the Netherlands and South America. Yet the generation of talent, largely through two clubs, MTK and Ferencváros, never stopped. Hungary reached the World Cup final in 1938, and the final of the 1939 Mitropa Cup (a forerunner of the European Cup for sides from central Europe) was contested by two Hungarian sides.
Although neither club was at all exclusive, MTK were seen as the side of the assimilated Jewish middle class and Ferencváros of a nationalistic, often ethnically German, working class. MTK were forcibly disbanded by the Fascist government in March 1942 and although they were reconstituted after the war, there had been not just a catastrophic loss of life but also the destruction of vital links with the past. The Communist government that took power in 1947 was suspicious of Ferencváros and its Right-wing leanings, and so when football was nationalised in 1949 it was given to the food-workers union rather than one of the bigger state organisations such as the army (Honvéd) or the secret police (MTK), a deliberate attempt to limit their resources and influence. Again, the result was to undermine the foundations of Hungarian football’s excellence. After the defections of 1956, there was no means of replacing what had been lost.
The memory of how good things had been, though, remained — and proved inhibitive. The side that reached the quarter-final of the 1966 World Cup always suffered by comparison with the Aranycsapat. The 1978 World Cup side suffered by comparison with them, and the 1986 side was in turn seen as being not as good as the 1978 generation. After that the returns diminished to such a point that Hungary stopped even qualifying for tournaments.
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SubscribeIt baffles me that no leader in Britain has ever made a big deal about football. If someone promised within the opening pages of their manifesto to invest in the creation and maintenance of local football pitches – ones that didn’t slide down hill, have craters and were mowed more than twice a year – or offered an incentive to encourage more people to qualify as coaches, or made it so fans had an effective say in any new ownership, it would be hugely popular. People like me me would forgive all sorts of other policies
Perhaps that last sentence explains why it’s the Orbans and Berlusconis who make the most of the pro-football posturing and now I’m considering the possibility that my irrational love of the game could be used to bring about the demise of my country . . .
Que sera sera. Forza Brittania!
It’s hard to think of any UK leaders who were natural football fans.
Maybe Gordon Brown, but he was appointed rather than elected.
Alex Salmond, (a Jambo) but not Nicola Sturgeon.
I think you’re right, I can’t think of anyone. David Cameron was simultaneously a Villa and West Ham fan if I remember rightly. Corbyn pretends to be an Arsenal fan, and I suppose that kind of makes sense – I can see why he admires the type of football that emphasises the importance of his players retaining possession over them ever actually outscoring the opponent
Budum-chi
Be careful what you ask for. In Portugal, almost everyone is a supporter of a football side. Several MPs do football commentary on tv and have columns in Sport newspapers. Football is actually more divisive than politics if you believe that. Saying that I’m a fanatic when it comes to my football side would be an understatement. Don’t take the red pill. It’s not a path to happiness. PS: I don’t give a damn about our national side but “we” are playing Hungary today. I hope they win.
It would baffle me if any national politician made such a promise. Providing public sports facilities is a local matter for local politicians.
Yes, local govt needs more money, but that shouldn’t be from the national purse. Schools, housing, planning – and yes, public amenities – should be decided and funded locally. What national politicians need to do is allow local govt to raise its own taxes for that purpose – whether it’s through business, property, or local income taxes.
Great Article by Mr. Wilson, whose Guardian offerings plummeted in quality in recent times. Regarding Paul Sorrenti’s comment – Harold wilson was an unfashionable Huddersfield supporter, whereas not only Corbyn but also Starmer are pseudo Arsenal fans, good grief! How can they hope to connect with the traditional base.