Coronavirus pandemic or topical disputes with the European Commission aside, one can always count on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to show his love for football.
His pride was evident in the the picture he posted on Facebook ponce last season’s champion, Ferencváros, made it into the group matches of the Champions’ League.
“I placed my bet on Fradi. Go, Fradi!” he wrote in a Facebook post, referring to the team — as most everybody does in the country — by its nickname.
His announcement was accompanied by a short, 30-seconds video featuring the team’s anthem, “Hajrá Fradi” (Go, Fradi).
After a 3-3 match away, on Tuesday, the team drew 0-0 against Molde at a match behind closed doors, making it past the preliminaries with more goals scored away. Ferencváros, one of the country’s oldest football clubs established in 1899, also has one of the largest fan bases in the country and last year competed in the 2019-2020 European League.
Orbán is a long-time football fan and one-time player. When he first became prime minister in 1998 at the age of 35, he was even still an active professional player in his home village Felcsút FC.
Title image: Hungarian football team Ferencváros celebrates its success in the Champions’ League preliminaries against Norway’s Molde in Budapest on September 29, 2020. (MTI/Tamás Kovács)
