This time, he called the president of UEFA, because according to him, Putin is making another attempt to influence him through Fradi.

"In a letter, we call on the president of UEFA to take steps to prevent another attempt to influence Putin! It lasted until now: we managed to get out of the Russian spy bank due to European pressure,

Viktor Orbán would now let the Putins back through Fradi.

Normally, everyone would be happy for a multinational company to become a sponsor of a Hungarian soccer team. Money comes from abroad, most of it is spent in Hungary, Hungarian GDP increases, Hungarian football gets stronger, win-win. However, even this does not go as it should in the Hungarian championship, which has been completely overthrown by Fidesz. In the present case, the Hungarian soccer team is Fradi, which Fidesz has long since settled on, and the foreign multinational is the Russian Gazprom.

The world's largest natural gas producer was also the sponsor of the German football team Schalke. According to sports economist Gábor Szabados, until the war in Ukraine broke out, Gazprom was one of the biggest sponsors of both the Champions League and UEFA. As he said, it is logical that the energy company is now trying in a country that is friendlier to Russia than other European states. Gábor Szabados believes that if the agreement is successful, Gazprom would become the main sponsor and bring several billion forints to Ferencváros, whose annual budget is 20 billion forints.

This phenomenon is not new: it is called »sportswashing«. The signing of Cristiano Ronaldo, N'Golo Kante or Rúben Neves was not important to Saudi Arabia either, because it was so important for them to see these world stars live. But because they want to improve Saudi Arabia's battered reputation due to human rights concerns, brutal executions and the exercise of power that cannot be called democratic in the least.

Gazprom is now preparing to do the same with Fradi: it wants to sneak back into European football as a sponsor of Ferencváros. And Gábor Kubatov knows this exactly.

I informed my MEP colleagues about Putin's latest attempt to influence - and I asked for their support in writing a letter to the UEFA president:

take steps to prevent this shameless alliance from taking place.”

Index / Facebook

Featured image: MTI/Zoltán Máthé