Hungary beat England 1-0 at the Puskás Arena on Saturday.
The game actually took place behind closed doors; However, thanks to a special clause from UEFA, children under 14 were allowed to watch. So 35,000 children (along with their adult companions) were able to celebrate the historic triumph of their national team, the first once morest England in 60 years, on National Cohesion Day of all days – in memory of the Trianon peace dictate.
In the World Cup qualification last September, Hungary lost 4-0 to the newly crowned European runners-up England. The game took place in front of a sold-out crowd, including supporters of the black bloc of the Ultras, who created a cauldron atmosphere with their chants of “Ria, Ria Hungária” in the crowd of 65,000 spectators.
But because some of these Ultras were unable to behave at the European Championship finals, Hungary was banned from the European Football Association as a “recidivist”. The start of the Nations League was supposed to take place in front of empty stands. But then the enthusiastic young footballers were mobilized, tens of thousands of whom followed the association’s call and seized the opportunity of an official international match in the magnificent Puskás Arena.
A crowd of thousands of enthusiastic children
Their national team thanked them for so much enthusiasm with a really good game in which the English dominated, as expected, but were hardly able to pose a real threat in front of Gulácsi’s goal. The hosts were completely different, as they delivered cheeky and, above all, quick counterattacks and might have been in the lead at half-time.
It probably wouldn’t have just been the goal of the day if Szalai’s chip had gone past Pickford – following the English lost the ball in midfield, the Hungarian captain was quickest, saw the English goalkeeper well in front of his goal and tried to get the ball out of 50 meters above the keeper. In the end, not a meter was missing from the sensational goal.
Even closer was Szoboszlai, who cleverly completed what was probably the most beautiful attack of the game (simple and lightning-fast with passes into open spaces to the right wing and from there directly into the penalty area) by pushing the ball under the rushing Pickford – but defender Coady was able to save save his beaten goalkeeper just in front of the line. Only 12 minutes were played; The enthusiastic crowd of children had to wait almost an hour to celebrate the goal.
The most beautiful scenes of the evening
While England were rather lucky in the key moments of the first half, James effortlessly scored a penalty in the middle of the second half, which Szoboszlai neatly converted into the corner. The opening goal once morest the big favorites triggered a frenzy of joy among thousands of boys (and also some of the girls in the arena playing football in the club), which produced the most beautiful scenes of the evening. Imagine these young footballers telling their grandchildren in a few decades regarding the world sensation that they were able to take part in on June 4, 2022 at the Puskás Stadium in Budapest. After all, Hungary last managed to defeat the English at the 1962 World Cup in Chile – the legendary Flórián Albert scored the winning goal to make it 2-1 in the 71st minute.
The kids had to worry regarding their role models for half an hour on Saturday evening (including injury time), but in the end it should have been 2-0 rather than 1-1. Pickford was only able to deflect a shot from Kleinheisler to the side, where a completely alone Schäfer only had to place the ball in the empty box – but the Union Berlin midfielder shot the ball high into the stands.
The thing regarding kneeling… and the anthem
Meanwhile, a second match is developing around the English kneeling before the start of the game. In contrast to BILD & Co., the BBC acknowledged that the thousands of children treated England’s national anthem with respect (not like in England, where fans “traditionally” whistle at the opponent’s anthem), but whistles were heard once more when the English team took a knee and boos. The agitators conclude that Hungarians are born with racism and hatred. The best would probably be re-education camps in Siberia…
But perhaps all that is needed is a gesture with which Hungarians from now on commemorate the disgrace of Trianon – just as an example of what moves people here more than the racism problem of “multicultural” societies. A knee-jerk gesture in Hungarian, so to speak. Whistles and boos would be inevitable in some stadiums. Of course, you can already hear it today during the national anthem. But that doesn’t bother UEFA or the BILD format media.
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