“There will be an election next year, if we are not smart, Hungarian football will end for years. We need a government that sees sports as a strategic sector, and within that the most popular sport, soccer,” Viktor Orbán declared on Tuesday in the Puskás Arena, where the legends of Hungarian football traditionally gather before Christmas.
According to the coverage of Nemzeti Sport, the prime minister did not talk about politics in his speech, but instead remembered three legends who died in 2025: György Mezey, Imre Jenei and József Garami. Viktor Orbán said that if Ferencváros had not performed so well on the international stage in 2025, that year would be a failure.
Viktor Orbán once again expressed his regret that our national team will miss the 2026 FIFA World Cup:
Once again, we have no choice but to remember the goals of Esterházy, Détári, and Kiprich from the qualifier forty years ago, we can live off of this for a while, but it would be nice to have a fresh sense of success.
The Christmas football celebration was organized for the eighteenth time this year by János Jakab, a former elite football player who currently works as an adviser to the Prime Minister. The joint Christmas celebration of the old football greats has been held in the Puskás Arena since 2019, but Viktor Orbán reminded that the tradition was started in a cafe in 2008, with only thirteen former footballers. “The list of those who have left is growing, yet there are more of us, and this should be the case for any healthy nation,” said the prime minister, who recalled that he and former FIFA president Sepp Blatter fought together to make football about the game, not about money.
(Cover photo: Viktor Orbán on December 13, 2025. Photo: Tamás Kaszás / Index)
