This has become the norm. We have become a dangerous, strong, sometimes sparkling team. In the 90s, as a small child, I became a die-hard Barcelona fan because of the duo of Stoichskov and Romario, and here the focus is on Stoichskov. The Bulgarian national team of the era, the congregation of geniuses, caused admiration mixed with envy in my friends and I - why do they have Stoichkov and Balakov? Why don't we have it? - asks Gergő Kovács in his opinion article on Mandine. We will look at this

In the same way, we lived in the golden age of our neighbors, the Romanians, the Slovaks, the Austrians, the Slovenians, the Croatians - while we supported them and loved them. And meanwhile: why don't we have a team for something, why don't we have classics?

In a way, that's what our last thirty years have been about. Why doesn't a country that celebrates even the crumbs of success with 70,000 fans in the stands, 10,000 on the parade route, and millions in the living rooms, have a good national team, preferably with classics? Why isn't there a real red-white-green team for the country that deserves it?

In short, what happened was that we entered the world's greatest stadium, here in Budapest, and beat the Bulgarians to pieces in front of a full house.

Sixty-five thousand of us went again, against the French, the English, the Germans, and pretty much everyone: children, families, ultras and less ultras. It's like playing international finals, over and over again.

This has become the norm. We have become a dangerous, strong European top-middle team, who can beat the English (twice), the Germans - and little by little we are catching everyone we can. It's already going against the middle teams, which is a new milestone: so far we've been teasing the lion's mustache, or even tearing it out (see 0:4), but our level, the level of the little lions, has often caught us. And now?

Maybe that particular Hungarian lion is an adult. We often don't want to believe this ourselves, so all we have to do is look at the board.

Yes, I know that it will be Montenegro and Serbia... but it is good to record the current reality: we sent the Bulgarians home with a school game, whose coach says the Hungarian model is an example to follow. I don't think he was being polite, he looked at the board. (And he studied a few of our matches, say against the English, the Germans or the French.)

Szoboszlai's free kick goal, close up:

The Hungarian national team is a dangerous team, because there are twelve of them on the field, exactly one more than the opponent: this was indicated by the wonderful live image transformed into a light show at the beginning of the match. A full house, more than 60,000 people against Bulgaria, at zero degrees, in a stormy wind - what can be added to that, the Szoboszlais added.

During the break, my childhood friend, who got a ticket to another sector, called me: we aired the slogans, but what we really wanted to tell each other was that we are living our football dreams step by step, year by year.

That our beloved, complex team stumbled on the field earlier and did not play as we imagined. Now they go out on the turf and play exactly the same, or a little better. We have reached our dreams. "What was it like when Szoboszlai went around the Bulgarian defender out of rhythm?"

University students were sitting in the stands above me, a mix of boys and girls. When I was a university student, the story was about which big team would humiliate us in the current stakes match, and whether we would reach third or fourth place in the current group. Now these guys got up during the break and, just for fun, bought three (!) beers each for the ice-cold second half: every goal was equal.

Civilians Info: Right! - Viktor Obrán's bon mot became famous when we qualified for the EC in 2016. Yes! You have to fight and you will get results, you have to fight long and hard, and things don't go without going down, but we always reach higher and higher plateaus. Hungarian football is getting stronger all over the Carpathian Basin, a huge opportunity to feel the success and share it with tens, hundreds and millions of people. The football arena is full again, as it was during the time of the golden team, but today we can also accompany the national 11 abroad and the enthusiastic fans support every game there.

Soccer brings the nation together! Not a little!

Source: Mandarin

Featured image: YouTube