Bank: Tough National Day on the agenda

BUDAPEST. An untested national team is in Hungary. For the players, it is a chance to show that they want to be on the national team seriously.

Their manager got his chance yesterday.

He guaranteed nothing at all.

There are few things as fascinating as walking around political events and being amazed that everything is just as usual.

Hungary is a country of culture, Budapest a city of culture. Since I’m a historical idiot, I’d like to think that it’s a vaccine against fascism and autocracy. But it’s not. The book cafes and synagogues, the streets named after great intellectuals and artists, the imposing buildings reflected in der schönen blauen Donau… all that has its opposite. The arrow crosses, the memorial wall at the Jewish ghetto, the fight over the Pride festival that opens tonight. During the European Championship, Orbán’s fight against the LGBTQi world became clear to Europe, Putinist laws have been passed since then, but once again the mayor of Budapest has promised – contrary to the president’s decree – to let the rainbow flag fly from the city hall.

Keeping football and politics separate? Well, there is no European country where it is as absurd to even try. Football is not a consequence of Viktor Orbán’s nationalist autocracy – it is the very core of it.

Five years ago, Tokmac Nguen (now at Djurgården) was reprimanded by the Football Association when he honored George Floyd during a match with Ferencvaros against Orbán’s heart project Puskás Akadémia. Four years ago, Germany and Hungary ended up in a diplomatic crisis over the rainbow colors during the European Championship. The Puskás Academy is a top team without an audience, the real Puskás’ old Honved harrows in the middle of the second division without money.

Last Wednesday was the day of national solidarity in memory of Hungary’s Treaty of Versailles in Trianon, today the football black bloc marches from Verseny Street towards Puskas Stadium. And tomorrow?

Well, you can never guarantee anything. As Jon Dahl Tomasson said when asked to comment on the rumors that Middlesbrough want him as their new manager.

Can the money tempt him? Another kind of career trampoline? England?

Of all the possible answers, and he was given three or four chances to find alternatives, he landed on the one that leaves the most room for speculation:

– You can never guarantee anything in football.

It’s going to be tough

No, you can’t. And no one imagines that he will reject the call if Florentino Pérez calls in October. That’s not the point. He had the opportunity to send a clear signal that “I am only here, only now, I can guarantee that nothing else but Sweden exists for me”.

He didn’t say that. It doesn’t make me question his professionalism, but possibly the credibility and long-term nature of the project. Maybe he was just more honest than he needed to be. “Middlesbrough? Maybe that. But now we’re going to face Hungary here.”

Sweden will do that. On its national day itself.

Robin Olsen will be in goal, Isak Hien will be captain, Emil Holm will play on the right. Hugo Larsson and Anthony Elanga will also start. Players like Daniel Svensson, Samuel Dahl and Benjamin Nygren may get chances to book a place in the national team plans for the World Cup qualifiers. There may even be minutes given to something really new and fresh: Momo Sonko? John Mellberg? I will be most interested in Hugo Larsson, this is his chance to jump to the front of the queue.

It’s going to be tough, regardless.

Hungary has its absence problems. Milos Kerkez is on his way to Liverpool, Barnabás Varga (their only real nine) is also missing. But anyone who has seen Hungary play here knows that when it goes fast, it goes fast, that the hurricane of the Carpathian brigade in the stands can blow away any opponent.

You can do like Dejan

And if we take out a Swedish eleven with players who are not here (Widell-Zetterström – Krafth, Lindelöf, Starfelt – Kulusevski, Smith, Bergvall, Svanberg, Nanasi – Isak, Gyökeres) it would be the favorite against the eleven that starts tonight.

It will be a test for the system, as much as an individual test game. In March, the team building swung from the fiasco in Luxembourg to a competent gala match against Northern Ireland, now they face tougher opposition with a handful of substitutes and squad players. Do the game ideas hold up to it? Is the squad secure enough in its identity to step up as JDT-compatible against Hungary at the Puskás Aréna?

At best it will hold up, at worst Sweden will go home with a heartburn. You can’t guarantee anything in football.

I asked Isak Hien what kind of team captain he wanted to be, he asked to come back in a couple of months with an answer.

You can do like Dejan Kulusevski, when he had the blindfold on against Azerbaijan. He gathered the players in a circle, said his “I’m hungry, let’s eat”, and then he went out and scored two goals and played until one.

And here we are now, with an injury-hit national team and a tough national day on the agenda.

We’re in Hungary. Let’s eat.

We’re in Hungary. Let’s eat