Football: absolutely loves it. Credit: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/ Getty
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.
In October 2006, I interviewed György Kárpáti, who had played in the notorious “Blood in the Water” water polo match at the Melbourne Olympics, when Hungary beat the USSR 4-0 a month after the Uprising had been crushed. The day before, he’d paid what he knew was likely to be his final visit to Puskás, who was by then in the grip of dementia. “At least he doesn’t understand we’ve just lost to Malta,” Kárpáti said. Hungarian football was at a new low.
A week later, Orbán spoke at a march to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of the Uprising. He had come to prominence in 1989 with a brave and incendiary speech calling for the Soviets to withdraw, and would go on to be elected prime minister in 1998 before being defeated by a Socialist-Free Democrat coalition in 2002. Scandal within the government and the anniversary of the Urpising presented him with an opportunity; the march developed into an anti-government protest and then rioting, during which plastic bullets were fired.
Football went hand-in-hand with politics for Orbán, and on 1 April 2007, less than six months after Puskás’s death and on the 80th anniversary of his birth, he co-founded the Puskás Academy, a football club in Felcsút.
Orbán was re-elected three years later and, claiming a democratic mandate, set about reforming the constitution on more authoritarian lines. As the control of Fidész, his increasingly Right-wing party, tightened, so the Academy grew. In 2014, construction was completed on the Pancho Arena in Felcsút, an extraordinary 3,800-capacity stadium with copper domes and a wooden vaulted roof, for a town with an official population of 1,800. “Pancho” was a nickname for Puskás, a man who never set foot in the village. It is more than a football venue, though; the stadium has become a vital networking site, a place where politicians and businessmen know they can find the prime minister, who owns the dacha next door.
In 2013, the Academy was promoted to the top flight for the first time, and although they were relegated in 2016, they came straight back up the following season. In 2020, the club finished third. Last season they were second. Whether their sudden rise is a sign of smart investment and excellent coaching, or of the weakness of the rest of the Hungarian league depends who you ask — or it could be that there is something more sinister going on. Towards the end of the 2019-20 season, the Mezőkövesd coach Attila Kuttor was fined €5,000 for claiming referees were under pressure to help the Academy qualify for the Europa League. (They did qualify, but lost 3-0 to the Swedish side Hammarby in the first qualifying round).
Football is a vital tool for Orbán, and 11 of the 12 top-flight clubs in Hungary are effectively Fidész-controlled. At least 25 major new stadiums have been built in Hungary over the past decade, often by construction firms with links to the Prime Minister, and all taking advantage of the country’s TAO scheme, which gave tax breaks to companies who donated to sports clubs. Might those funds have been more usefully directed elsewhere? As Hungary’s hospitals have creaked under the strain of the pandemic, it’s been impossible not to wonder.
Progress on the pitch is difficult, and the economics of European football are stacked against Hungary. Talented young players gravitate naturally to the wealthier leagues of Austria and Germany; but slowly, there are signs of progress. When Hungary qualified for Euro 2016, it was their first appearance at a major tournament for 30 years. When they then beat Austria and three times held the lead against Portugal before drawing to reach the knockouts, it felt vaguely miraculous. Then reality dawned with a 4-0 defeat to Belgium.
Still, the sense of inevitable decline is over. In part that’s down to a belated acceptance that the achievements of the early 50s are unattainable now, but it’s also because of the Orbán-inspired investment. The forward Roland Sallai, who is likely to start against Portugal, is at Freiburg now, but he came through the Puskás Academy. And, at last, Hungary have a young player of truly exceptional potential, their first for perhaps four decades: the 20-year-old midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai who, like Orbán, was a youth at Videoton. He joined RB Leipzig from Red Bull Salzburg in January but hasn’t played since because of injury and will miss the tournament.
With on-field success a distant prospect, Hungary has started to promote itself as the ideal host, staging judo, wresting and aquatics world championships in recent years. A possible Olympic bid lurks, unconvincingly, in the background. Last year, Budapest stepped in to stage the Uefa Super Cup when the pandemic forced a rejig of the schedule. That was the first major game held at the Puskás Arena, built on the site of the old Communist Népstadion in central Budapest. In February and March, both legs of the Champions League last-16 ties between Manchester City and Borussia Mönchengladbach and Liverpool and RB Leipzig were held there to circumvent Covid restrictions.
Of course, Hungary is not the ideal host for everybody. Orbán condemned Ireland’s players for taking the knee before a friendly in Budapest last Tuesday, while the commentator János Hrutka was sacked by the Orbán-affiliated Spíler TV after he supported the national goalkeeper Péter Gulácsi for criticising a law that prevents unmarried or same-sex couples adopting children. Football is an arena for Orbán to appeal to his populist nationalist base.
The Arena was always going to be built for the Euros, and for it to have staged games behind closed doors would have seemed a dreadful anti-climax. Which is why the decision to allow maximum capacity has been greeted with some scepticism — if not from the Fidész-controlled Hungarian media.
Hungary’s figures have improved recently, with just eight deaths and 199 new cases announced on Friday, which allowed Orbán to announce a widescale lifting of restrictions at the end of May as a total of 5 million vaccinations was reached. But Hungary has suffered dreadfully from a widespread complacency about the second wave: its ratio of 3,060 deaths per million population is better only than Peru. By way of comparison, the UK lies 15th in that list, with 1,909 deaths/million.
There are those who wonder how 60,000 can be allowed into a football stadium while public protests are still limited at 500: the demonstration that prompted Orbán to make a U-turn last week, by offering a referendum on whether Budapest should host a campus of Shanghai’s Fudan University, instead involved multiple small protests converging outside the parliament.
Polls suggest Orbán could face a serious challenge from a united opposition in next year’s elections, which is another reason the show must go on. Staging this tournament is part of the legacy he has envisaged. Drawn in an extremely difficult group with France and Germany as well as Portugal, progress is very unlikely. Even taking a point would be an achievement.
But a full stadium alone may be enough. Orbán has not returned Hungarian football to the status of seven decades ago — who could? — but he has brought about improvement and he is bringing the biggest circuses to town. Whether that justifies deflecting spending from more obviously worthy causes is debatable, but few in the Ferenc Puskás Arena will be worrying about that if Hungary upset Portugal this evening — or frankly, even if they don’t.
Jonathan Wilson is a columnist for the Guardian, the editor of the Blizzard, the co-host of the podcast It Was What It Was and author of 12 books on football history and one novel.
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SubscribeIt might be relevant whether the targeting of anti-Israel events took place before or after the event. Hi It may also be relevant in what form this targeting took. Criticism, perhaps? Complains about unacceptable behaviour, or incitement to violence? The analysis seems extremely simplistic to me.
Massive shoehorning of the word ‘right-wing’ here. Do these Pro-Netanyahu regime lobby groups cancel leftists for any other reason than their opposition to Israel?
no.
I’m afraid this article and the data it uses mean zilch. The left is renowned as being litigious and having thin skins when it come to slights against them. Given that the majority of academics are of the left and hard left I could well imagine that crying wolf would give themselves a satisfaction of calling out the other for any imagined slight.
I am reminded of the period immediately after the Brexit vote when it was falsely claimed that there had been an increase of racist attacks but upon analysis of the data and events there was no demonstrable or statistical evidence for any such claim.
My feelings about this consist primarily in an intense Schadenfreude.
What this proves is the old stage “anything you can do I can do better”. Time to cancel the cancel culture.
Is this really an academic problem? After my PhD, I started my career in Mathematics at a British University. Nobody was interested in my political opinions, and when I occasionally volunteered them in the pub, nobody seemed bothered.
Perhaps the opinions that seem to cause so much anger, are not proper academic topics.
Yes, all the tensions do seem to erupt in particular studies. Which, if true, makes one wonder why they think their opinions matter so much? Is it a particular person drawn to those studies or the studies themselves that bend students out of shape?
I worked in an educational branch of the civil service, most staff were teachers, it was a horrible stultifying atmosphere (at least for anyone with traditional/conservative views). All these orgs have DEI programmes. This means forced attendance at what amounts to political indoctrination events, progressive messaging presented as if everyone of goodwill agrees with it, recruitment/promotion based on ethnic/gender characteristics.
Reap what you sow!
Politics should stay out of academia. Too many social “scientists”, communication and journalism majors, gender studies, DEI studies, social workers, racial studies, etc. An academic is there to teach all ideas, and allow the students to form their own opinions, not preach their own beliefs. Also, keep DEI out of STEM. I am glad to see the left academics cancelled. They have had too much influence.
As someone who works in a British university, I can tell you that so-called Left-wing academics very much have an easy ride with respect to ‘cancel culture’. They have to say something demonstrably and extremely antisemitic to face sanction – something that might be classed as gross misconduct, leading to possible arrest. On the other hand, all it takes for someone else to face investigation and/or sanction is to say something as simple and true as ‘sex is immutable’. This shows the imballance. The only reason Left-wing academics are now showing up in the stats is because they’re saying some pretty disgusting things by any standard.
The main difference between the two groups may be summed up thus:
The left indulge in cancel culture, if they do, in order to protect the underdog. In contrast the right do so in order to keep harrying the underdog.
The main difference between the two groups is that the left censor their opponents, while their opponents censor themselves for fear of losing their jobs.
Kamala Harris an underdog?! Wow, you have a funny idea of what constitutes an underdog. If I had openly said anything against Harris or her lavishly funded (greatest in history) campaign, I would have been cancelled immediately in my university by Left-wing loonies, that’s for sure!
Well, the Palestinians are the underdogs. And on the evidence of the present article, my contention is amply justified. Even Harris is against the Palestinians!
Oh, that old chestnut! I thought that was behind your whinging. Got it out of you eventually.
I have the feeling that you know not the meaning either of the underdog or of chestnut.
In other words, left-academics have an arrogant saviour complex. Right-academics mostly keep their mouths shut, being unable to ‘harry’ anyone.
If you want to know who holds power over you look at who you cannot talk about
Good. I hope it is now dawning on even the dimmest lefty academic that ‘cancel culture’ has got completely out of hand. Universities should be havens of free speech, where the way to deal with differences of opinion is through vigorous debate.
The only limitation to this is that students and academics alike should feel safe and welcome on campus. Individuals and groups which threaten this, should be jumped on from a great height by the university authorities.
Campus is not a place where you go to feel safe. You go there to be challenged and to grow up.
I agree… but i suspect David was referring to being safe from threat of actual physical violence, not having one’s sensibilities threatened.
Amen. The level of discourse on university campuses would be improved if the response to “I have been injured” was “Show me the bruise.” Tormenting someone emotionally is beyond the pale, but claiming you have been hurt by a “microaggression” is waaayy beyond that.
Read this, then thought about, then thought “I don’t care”, let them eat each other.
Useful article which complicates the picture convincingly
How can an academic – regardless of their own views- seek to shut down alternative opinion ? It is inconsistent with the very concept of academia to deny research and discussion.
“The right” are cancelled for having the temerity to question radical ideas that are clearly unscientific and based on ideology rather than robust evidence. “The left” according to this article are cancelled for anti-semitism and offering support for terrorists. Hmmm! Now can I see any difference?
Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism. Many orthodox Jews are against Zionism. In what weird world are they anti-Semitic?
The differences in tone in the reporting on the Amsterdam riot perfectly illustrate the need to be clear on this issue. Naturally the New York Times called the attacks antisemitic but less biased outlets called them what they actually were, anti-Israel. This doesn’t make the attacks any less reprehensible, of course. They were still racist. But they weren’t “antisemitic.”
Sure, chasing down Jews to give them a life changing kicking isn’t anti Semitic.
Oh, wait
They were every bit as anti-Jewish as the Maccabi fans were anti-Arab.
They weren’t even necessarily anti Israel. The Maccabi fans are animals, and had caused trouble all over Amsterdam leading up to the match. A reaction from the more punchy of the home fans was to be expected
Maccabi fans (I won’t make excuses for them, they are hooligans) tear down several Palestinian flags and sang songs . But what happened in this night was a carefully planned action, which was agreed upon on social media networks. The participating local fans were not native Hollands – they were from Turkey, Morocco and Iraq. Drowning people in icy water, checking their passport, trying to run over them with a car – this is a different level of violence.
In the world where a thin veneer of anti Zionism justifies the beating, torture, rape and murder of jews
Sorry, but anti-Zionism can really only mean one thing: the eradication of the Jewish state. How is this not only not anti-Semitic but also genocidal? This is most definitely what is meant by those who call themselves ‘anti-Zionists’ today. This is why so-called anti-Zionism is often seen as either antisemitic or a close proxy to it.
Important point. Anti-zionism has to now, by definition, be anti-semitic. Being anti-zionist before the formation of Israel fair enough. Many jews were too, and some even foresaw the problems we face now. But 77 years later – means one is supporting the liquidation of a Nation. It’s ok to contend the decision to create Israel was wrong, but that’s for historians and not for politics today which has to deal with the realities of now. Liquidation of a nation a totalitarian mentality.
Whether Anti-Zionism genocidal perhaps a slightly different matter though. It could mean one state solution with all having equal rights. It could mean ethnic cleansing and population movement, but not deliberate extermination – although lesson is things slip into the genocidal very quickly. What it does mean though is it’s adherents want an end to a Jewish state defined by it’s religion, and thus it is anti-semitic.
A one state solution won’t work. The antecedents of at least half the Jews in Israel came there to escape persecution in Arab countries legitimised by some interpretations of the Qur’an and most interpretations of the Hadith.
Many Orthodox Jews are under against Zionism, but that doesn’t make them anti-Israel; it is a religious issue to do with divine v human action in the remaking of the nation of Israel. The excuse that Muslim and current left-wing extremism’s anti-Zionism is different from anti-Semitism is pitiful. You cannot logically call for all Jews to be cleared from the region without knowing it will harm Jews; and you cannot blame Jews for all the capitalist ills of the West and pretend it’s anti-Zionism.
Zionism is the movement to provide Jews with a Jewish-majority state where, as individuals, they are not at the mercy of non-Jewish majorities. If an ultra orthodox Jew is anti-Zionist because he thinks that Jews have to remain at the mercy of non-Jews by divine decree, it might be debatable whether it represents authentic Judaism, but that is an intra-Jewish debate. But for a non-Jew to think that Jews everywhere should always remain at the mercy of non-Jewish majorities, and should be denied a refuge, is indeed antisemitic.
Duh!
Now could it possibly be that academics on the right are ganged up on and ousted by leftists because their research uncovers inconvenient truths, whereas leftish ‘pro-Palestinians’ are likely to be ousted because they organise massive disruption and victimise Jewish students and colleagues?
And the ‘speech’ they are sanctioned for will be things like ‘globalise the intifada, kill the j…s’ rather than things like ‘sex in mammals is binary’.
According to the compilers of the database, every incident involves an attempt to professionally sanction an academic for constitutionally protected speech.
Trump has vowed to crack down on people who censor constitutionally protected speech.
Oh dear, Noah, you’re a bit hard of thinking. The constitution protects the right to free speech and that includes hate speech and racist language. It doesn’t mean that there are no consequences for speech when it violates the codes of professional conduct. Do you get it now. Your idealogically driven agenda – that there’s a co-ordinated effort to shut down left-wing academics for anti-Israel speech – is all too clear. We get where you’re coming from.
The expression of political dissent always feels unpleasant to the side whose views support the object of that dissent but that does not affect one bit whether or not those expressions should be censored. Rather than reifying what is deemed beyond the pale by only one side, take up arms in your own struggle and exercise the very same right of free speech which is guaranteed by the same constitution.
I don’t see any evidence from the author that recent cancellations “of the Left” are being initiated “from the Right.”
Considering the absolute rarity within academia of influential and outspoken professors “on the Right” (after the many purges over the years), the far more plausible explanation is that these cancellations “of the Left” are being initiated “from the Left.”
In other words, if one is looking for new-age Nazis they merely need to pay a visit to an influential Ivy League university campus and speak with self-righteous antisemitic professors and students “on the Left” who have evidenced their desire both in word and via their targeted campus violence to eradicate the Jewish people “from the river to the sea.”
Good and decent people on the Left who’ve witnessed this abhorrent acceptance and promotion of antisemitism by others on the Left have started to police their own.
He’s fairly (not very) clear that ‘from the right’ means ‘conventionally right of the view being expressed’ ie does not exclude left-left conflict.
The author doesn’t provide evidence for his assertion that the new cancellations “of the Left” are coming “from the Right.”
Considering the absolute dearth within academia of popular and outspoken professors “on the Right” (after the many purges of such ‘undesirables’), the far more plausible explanation is that good and decent people “on the Left” have uncomfortably witnessed the rise of new-age Nazism (and a corresponding rise in violence directed toward Jews at university and calls for the eradication of Jews “from the river to the sea”) from fellow compatriots “on the Left,” and have therefore decided it’s in their best interest to police their own.
Dup
Your first word came to mind instantly. Talk about a Master of the Obvious.
They forgot that the right to free speech is explicitly for the protection of the minority. They then forgot they are the minority.
This paper confirms what would be common knowledge to any reasonably educated person reading events of the past ten years. Whether it is important or not is moot. Perhaps we need another reformation to “rid us of troublesome academics “ in the non-STEM subjects.
Dissolution of Monasteries did the job.
I might even be tempted to go further. Three higher grades in STEM subjects and the state will pay your fees provided you agree to work in the UK for 5 years after graduation. It will also help you manage the transition from Uni to work, and support higher courses such as Masters and PhDs. After the next complete university cycle, student loans will cease for non-STEM subjects, especially PPE courses at ancient universities. Students will fund their own courses in non-STEM subjects. Parents, in the short term, will be encouraged to start putting funds away in tailored insurance policies directed at further education. Primary and Secondary education will be transformed by the introduction of vouchers, where parents may choose the appropriate school for their child. These vouchers are good for 15 years in all stages of education and may be redeemed at any point in the life of the student. Students can leave secondary education at any stage after they are 14. This will need tidying up a bit, but it should get rid of producer capture, destroy non-subjects, and encourage parents to become more informed and perhaps more involved in the lives of those they have seen fit to bring into the world.