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The Prime Minister said he did not doubt “for a second” that Hungarian football will get back on its feet. “In the past ten years, after all, I have made the biggest mistake in football: we built a stadium for sixty-four thousand spectators instead of one for ninety thousand. We had little faith, and that’s a mistake,” he stated, adding that he never had doubts concerning Hungarian football, given that “I spent more than thirty years in changing rooms” in villages, small towns, big cities and the capital, in both big clubs and small clubs.
According to Mr Orbán, any explanations that claim that the Hungarian football team is not successful due to the sports developments completed in recent years, but is, in fact, successful despite them, are “petty communist excuses conceived in exasperation.”
“Things in a country usually tend to move together in the right or wrong direction. Hungarian football is good not because the system of academies has improved all of a sudden or our coaches have made huge strides – though it’s true that everyone is a little better now than they were before – but because the whole country is moving together in some direction. We set out upwards,” the Prime Minister said, stressing that he means not only the Hungarian economy, but equally culture, the arts and science.
“After all, we have two freshly awarded Nobel Prize winners, regarding which it is possible to say that this, too, happened despite the Hungarian system, but it would be completely absurd. The Hungarian people as a community, these ten-something million people started moving upward together. They’re capable of even greater achievements. They expect more from life. Rather than saying that it’s good enough if things don’t change for the worse, they say that they want more, they want to take a step forward,” he said. He stressed that a desire for a higher order of life had appeared in Hungary, equally in the personal lives of most people and in small communities.
According to the Prime Minister, the Hungarian football team is not only about Dominik Szoboszlai; in addition to the captain who plays for Liverpool, there are other players with outstanding abilities on the team.
“Of course, he himself kicked the door in on the largest club, but in the meantime we now have the twenty-year-old Kerkez, Sallai at the best age in the Bundesliga, and then Schäfer – may the Lord help him to stay healthy. I see the personalities on whom the manager will be able to build a great team of the future,” he pointed out.
We have a team in which not just one person knows how to play football, but everyone, and everyone is able to play very well; at most, one member plays football better than anyone else in the world, Mr Orbán said. He highlighted that there were now matches where “we are beating serious European teams not because we’re accomplishing some special feat, but because we have better players.”
He said he starts every year by watching on 1 January the legendary 1953 match against England where Hungary won 6-3.
Regarding domestic football academies, the Prime Minister stressed that he had been very happy to see at the high-quality Fehérvár-Paks match last weekend that 19 of the 22 players on the starting lineups had been Hungarian.
“There has been a change in the system of academies as well. We have now reached the end of an old era and the beginning of a new one. The operation and funding of academies are changing significantly, and performance will be at the centre. The results that will be achieved. We no longer concern ourselves with what’s happening there; we only concern ourselves with what will come out of the academies,” he stated, adding that “for the time being” the state remains in charge of the operation of the academies.
“The system of priority academies in basketball, handball, football and in other sports, too, will remain within the competence of the state secretariat for sports. The time may come when we do away with this, too. But we’re not there yet. Now, we’re changing over to an output system, and once it has proved its worth, we can then start thinking about a new arrangement,” said the Prime Minister, adding that he is looking forward to the return of the era in Hungary which he knows from his childhood, and in which there were no academies, only clubs.
“Today, clubs are under such financial pressure that if they have to choose, they prefer the first team to young succession players. They don’t have enough money yet to afford to operate academies themselves. Therefore, we must protect Hungarian football from concentrating on today at the expense of tomorrow. The academy system is the guarantee of tomorrow, and in this sense, it is a great help for all disciplines of sport. Until clubs gain in strength, they need these crutches, the state-operated system of academies,” he laid down.
At next summer’s European Championship, Mr Orbán would like to see “three memorable matches” from the Hungarian team.
“This is an open group. Anything could happen. And whether we qualify triumphantly or come off the pitch with our heads bowed could well depend on a movement or two. These two movements must be good, come what may. This is a group in which the outcome will be decided by the Lord,” he opined.
He took the view that Hungary’s 184 Olympic gold medals “are not a mere coincidence: sports and Hungarians are a good match in character.” He highlighted that Hungarian sport should return to 100 per cent of its capacity, but circumstances have been poor in recent decades. “Now, we’re trying to make up for the shortcomings of thirty-something years within just a few years, not even mentioning the deformation of our sports life during socialism. It’s impossible to restore continuity with Hungarian sports life before communism; too much time has gone by. It can’t simply just be restored, we must rebuild everything in a more modern way, and in this the driving force, the fire starter is the Hungarian people’s special attraction to sports,” he said.
In his view, it is well worth looking upon sports grants as support provided for parents for the education of their children.
In the Prime Minister’s opinion, they have done everything they could to enable the Hungarian people’s commitment to sports to break the surface, and now they are waiting for the results. They have given coaches the appreciation they deserve, they have succeeded in refurbishing facilities, and they have brought international competitions to Hungary so that our athletes can enter the field here at home at competitions worthy of the work they have completed.
Regarding the Paris Olympics, he said for the time being “he has concerns,” and while this is not customary for him, he is “vexed by a feeling” because he cannot see right now what canoeing and kayaking as well as swimming are capable of, given that the performance of these two disciplines has a major impact on the number of our Olympic medals.
“Somewhere in the back rooms, in gymnasiums, there are fantastic, committed young coaches and trainers less known by the country’s wider public who are capable of conjuring up ever further talented athletes out of nowhere. It’s good to be Hungarian for this reason, too. People come along from unexpected places, from the depths of Hungary, without any prior record, and become the best of the world before our very eyes,” he said.
Regarding Budapest’s Olympic bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games which was withdrawn in February 2017, the Prime Minister said he, too, has a bad feeling about it, and “it hurts to know that we would have been capable of something, yet, we didn’t have a crack at it.” He stressed that we must realise at the same time that “the nation must move together.”
“There are always people, groups who are in the nation like ill fortune in the National Anthem. This is inevitable, regrettably. The bigger problem was that on this matter Hungary was not immune enough to them,” he explained, adding that he himself likewise did not enter the battle because you can only organise an Olympiad “if a large majority believes that the time has come.”
He highlighted that today the situation was different; all important facilities necessary for an Olympiad have been completed, and without an Olympiad Budapest “can hardly make much progress anymore.”
“Budapest’s level of development is at 160 per cent of the European Union’s average, while there are regions in Hungary which barely reach 50 per cent. All money must go to the less advanced regions. As a result, major state-financed urban projects can only be implemented in Budapest if it comes up with something that is important for every Hungarian, he said, reiterating that in the past 10 to 13 years all developments have been implemented in the capital by the state.
“Budapest has been put back on the world map by the government’s developments. At times, against the capital’s headwind, we still remember the World Athletics Championships. The government doesn’t want to force Budapest to host an Olympiad because the city itself must be ready for this idea. I think, fate owes the Hungarian people a Budapest Olympiad. The question is whether the people of Budapest want to collect this debt,” the Prime Minister said.
According to Mr Orbán, Hungary has robust sports diplomacy representation in international organisations; not only in football, but also in the Olympic movement. He stressed that today there was no better place for international sports federations than Budapest, and was happy to acknowledge that “former athletes, the representatives of a new generation have also grown into the job of national sports executive.”
