Hungary's football success is to reinforce PM Orbán's position in domestic politics

HUNGARY - In Brief 23 Jun 2016 by Istvan Racz

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For Hungary, today's Brexit vote is by far not the most important political event of these days. The one on the top of the list is Hungary's national football team's incredible success at the European Football Championship (Euro 2016) in France, namely that they won Group F of the qualifiers last night, ahead of Portugal, Iceland and Austria. As regards the background, Hungary was unable to even qualify itself for participation in EFCs between 1972 and 2016, and even now, the aggregated market value of the national football team's players happens to be the lowest out of the 24 national teams playing at the event.All this should simply go to the evening sports news in a normal case, but not in a country which has been missing success so badly for many years, and in one which has a prime minister who is notoriously addicted to football, and spent lots of public money on it, for which he has been sharply criticized by many so far. Now that the results are coming, the popular mood may turn in favor of PM Orbán, as his football mania seems to have become a key generator of national pride. Bear in mind that after all three matches played at Euro 2016 so far, car and public transportation traffic essentially stopped for a night in downtown Budapest, as tens of thousands of people went out to the streets, to celebrate the national football team.Whatever the results of further matches will be (next time Hungary will play with Belgium in June 26), Hungary's football resurrection will count as a spectacular success for most of the domestic population. And even if it cannot be directly attributed to him, PM Orbán and his party are likely to greatly benefit from that success, in an...