TOL Hungary

When football brings people together

August 24th, 2007 by robertnemeth

Singing people on the streets, everyone is happy? What happened in Budapest? Well, the Hungarian national football team has beaten Italy by 3:1, causing this year’s biggest sensation in football.

There are many analyses about how important sport and especially football is in forming and maintaining national identity. Wednesday night it was not important who voted for the left and who for the right, no one cared about it. The football team has won, nothing else really counted for many.

Actually, before the game, only the most optimistic fans were hoping a tight game, not even a draw since Hungarian football is basically non-existent. However, this time the young players (the average was around 22 years) really showed that they are at least talented. The two 23-year-old defender, Tamás Vaskó and Roland Juhász made the Italian strikers like Toni, Inzaghi and Del Piero invisible, Juhász even scored a goal, the equalizer. The 20-year-old left-wing, Balázs Dzsudzsák (the only player who plays in Hungary) made Italian coach Donadoni to replace his defender, the Champions League-winner Oddo at half-time. Sometimes last year’s best football player, Fabio Cannavaro could not do anything with the 21-year-old strikers, Tamás Priskin and Róbert Feczesin, moreover, Zoltán Gera even humiliated him before the third goal. But the two best players were two 18-year-old boys, Ádám Vass and Attila Filkor. Vass plays at the same position as Pirlo - and it was definitely him who was better this time. Filkor, who already plays for Inter Milan, came for the last half an hour. That was time when Hungary scored all the three goals - and all the three attacks were started by him.

Well, this definitely does not mean that Hungarian football has been resurrected. This is just a good sign, after losing against Malta and Cyprus, and after the poor performance of the Hungarian football clubs in the European cups. The problems remain the same: there are some talents, but they will be lost soon due to the lack of for instance appropriate instruction. And there are some people who have a very good life from football, even though there is not enough money in it.

Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, football is something that brings a nation together. No one should forget the huge presence of football-hooligans during last year’s riots. Some analysts say: if there were good Hungarian football, the volume of the riots would have been much smaller, if there had been any. We will see after the qualification games in the autumn…

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