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Mr Orbán said the publication is important primarily for the locals, but it also has conclusions to offer to Hungarian football in general.
If a country forgets its football past, it will have nothing to build its future upon, the Prime Minister pointed out, stressing that the precedents of Hungarian football – getting back upon its feet in the 2000s – are there in football during socialism, the Golden Team of the 1950s and the Hungarian team playing in the 1938 World Cup final.
Despite its disruptions, Hungarian football has always been able to restore continuity somehow. This was also the case upon the more recent establishment of football academies, Mr Orbán added.
However, he also pointed out that if football had no future, then its past, too, would become lost and turn into a mere inclusion. The old glory of Hungarian football is preserved through the fact that it has a present and a future, he highlighted.
The Prime Minister said “you never know what’s round the corner.” Upon the establishment of the youth military organisation in 1923 and of the club in 1931, people in Felcsút had no idea that there would be as many as three players on the Hungarian national team now preparing for the European Football Championship – Zsolt Nagy, László Kleinheisler and Roland Sallai – who originally came from the Felcsút Puskás Academy. Additionally, substitutes on the team include Balázs Tóth who was also raised in Felcsút.
At the end of the press conference, Mr Orbán spoke about the fact that many different sports had been tried in villages, but the history of village sport was fundamentally a history of football clubs. There were people in Felcsút who undertook to do the research and to edit the findings into a book, and President of the Board of Trustees of the Puskás Academy Lőrinc Mészáros agreed to finance the project. However, not every village finds itself in such a situation.
Therefore, the Prime Minister said if people in villages want to write the history of their sports clubs, the ministry of culture will match the funds raised by the locals for the purpose. This will be an interesting heritage, the Prime Minister added.
Introducing the two-volume publication, János Oláh recalled that the idea of processing the sports history of Felcsút had emerged at a board meeting. Together with Melinda Zsohár, he wrote a book not only about sport, but also about the village itself from which readers may learn about the history of the settlement. Already before the establishment of the academy, first and third division players – both men and women – were raised and educated in Felcsút, he added.
Melinda Zsohár described the publication as a village history which points beyond the borders of the village. It is full of local history and ethnographic elements based on personal memories as well as of true anecdotes, she observed.
Anita Major, who edited the publication together with Gábor Margittai, stressed the important role the book could play in reinforcing local identity, and also highlighted that sport always strengthened communities and brought people together.
