European Championship qualification against Israel: Hot national team match in the cathedral of corruption

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The Gaza war rages on. Israel still wants to play football – for the sake of its homeland, to make people happy. But at home the danger is too great. That is why UEFA looked for a safe place for the match against Switzerland and found it in Hungary. In a town called Felcsut, about 35 kilometers outside Budapest.

Two churches and a narrow-gauge railway adorn the small community, surrounded by forests and meadows. The real gem in the middle of the beautiful idyll is the Pancho Arena. A small pearl with 4,000 seats and an architecture that resembles that of a cathedral with its noble wooden arches. Named after Ferenc Puskas (1927-2006), who magnetized spectators at Real Madrid in the 1960s as ‘Pancho’.

After his death, the legend was revived in the form of a new football club in Felcsut. FC Puskas Academia is now playing in the first Hungarian competition and, despite the meager interest, is in third place, a team fed with talent from the enormous youth department, which has its own boarding school with ten heated training fields. The village club has even been playing internationally for three years, but the home games in the Europa and Conference League are still not sold out.

Football madman Orbán

No wonder. The sleepy town has only about 2,000 inhabitants, but it has a very lively population. Viktor Orban (60), Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. His holiday home is located right next to the stadium, where he regularly stays on weekends and holds his second office as president of the Puskas Academia.

As a child he was crazy about football, but also a brat who attracted negative attention in Felcsut. “I was an incredibly naughty boy, mischievous, brutal, violent,” is how Orban describes himself in one of his many biographies. Almost the smallest in the class at school, he was constantly involved in fights: “If I got a punch in the face, I gave two back.”

From gas fitter to billionaire

With his career as a footballer failing, Orban took on the communists as a law student and speaker for the right-wing Fidesz party. His declarations of war were widely heard by the people. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, his storm to the top of Parliament began. As Prime Minister he created a system of total control and corruption.

Orban installed his closest followers in the judiciary, the media and in the business community. Orban had the greatest influence on his childhood friend Lörinc Meszaros (57). Within just a few years, the mayor of Felcsut went from a simple gas fitter to the country’s biggest entrepreneur and richest man – thanks to an empire of more than 200 companies.

Number 1 in corruption

While democracy is gradually turning into a kind of capitalist dictatorship, the population continues to suffer from great poverty. The EU is talking about financial injections amounting to several billion euros. According to a report by the Corruption Research Center Budapest, the money does not end up where it is needed, but in the pockets of government loyalists.

As Transparency International reports, Hungary has become the number 1 most corrupt country in Europe in 2022. While education lags behind and teachers demonstrate on the streets, Orbán relies on bread and circuses. In recent years he has invested more than a billion euros in the construction of football stadiums alone.

The best example is the Pancho Arena. This also includes the historic narrow-gauge line, which is hardly in operation. The route runs from Felcsut to Szekesfehervar, where Orban went to school as a teenager.

Source : Blick