Whatever the score, when Hungary play Portugal on 15 June in their opening match of Euro 2020, the game will mark a significant moment in the story of prime minister Viktor Orbán’s close relationship with football. Over the past decade, the far-Right populist leader and his party Fidesz have used the game to consolidate their power in Hungary.
In Budapest, the new Puskás Aréna national stadium, built on the site of the communist-era Népstadion, and costing nearly half a billion euros, will host the national team’s first games at the tournament. With an eye on next year’s elections, where he faces a more united opposition than in previous years, Orbán will be hoping that the team rises to the occasion, and that the spectacle justifies the costs of the vast football project on which his government has embarked.
The national stadium is just the most expensive of the more than two dozen new stadiums that have been built in Hungary since 2010; one for every team in the top two divisions of the nation’s football. Much of the programme has been funded by the notorious TAO scheme, in which absurdly generous tax breaks were available to businesses that anonymously donated money to sports clubs. Some of the construction contracts involved went to close associates of the prime minister.
