@kelejanos.bsky.social
economist | data enthusiast | football expert and podcast host at 24.hu
Hungary doesn’t need another “system.”
It needs memory — and courage to be itself again.
You can’t copy-paste culture.
But you can play who you are. 🇭🇺⚽
It feels poetic — or prophetic — that Beregi’s manifesto appeared the same week Mezey passed.
One era ends: the age of imitation.
Another may begin: the return of identity.
This isn’t dull nostalgia.
It’s about rediscovering competitive advantage through culture.
As Beregi puts it: we must teach creativity, relationships, rhythm — not diagrams.
The classic Hungarian style was fast, fluid, non-positional, combinational.
It was about thinking football, not robotic execution.
Victory came with beauty intact — not at beauty’s expense.
Beregi - and his co-author Dávid László
- argues Hungary must reconnect football with its own language.
Hungarian’s free word order mirrors a flexible, creative mindset.
So should our football — unpredictable, expressive, intelligent.
Analyst
István Beregi calls this out in his paper “The Philosophy of Hungarian Football.”
Modern football, he writes, has become standardized, obsessed with data and structure.
We trained methods — but lost meaning.
Licenses replaced legacy.
Curricula replaced culture.
We copied Europe — forgetting that once, Europe copied us.
This was progress without personality; efficiency without essence.
After 1990, Mezey led Hungary’s coach education himself.
But instead of restoring that lost identity, he imported UEFA’s frameworks wholesale — Western methods without Hungarian roots.
As Ivan Krastev might say: we modernized by imitation.
This shift broke a chain of inheritance — the oral, cultural knowledge that made Hungarian football unique.
The game of Puskás and Hidegkuti wasn’t learned from manuals.
It lived in relationships, rhythm, and shared understanding.
In the 1960s–70s, Hungary’s coaching school (Testnevelési Főiskola) redefined football education.
It replaced style with science, imagination with measurement.
Every problem became a conditioning problem.
Mezey was its brightest student. By far.
Mezey was a paradox: visionary and disciplined, yet also the perfect symbol of how a nation’s football lost its spirit.
He stood at the center of Hungary’s long drift from intuition to imitation.
György Mezey, Hungary’s last World Cup coach, has died at 84.
His story isn’t just personal — it’s symbolic.
Few people embody both the rise and the collapse of Hungarian football’s identity quite like him.
How Hungary lost — and might revive — its football soul.⚽
A thread.
The wheeler-dealer approach to transfer strategy does not work - less is more when it comes to acquiring talent (analysis/story via @jnorthcroft.bsky.social for @thetimes.com)
www.thetimes.com/sport/footba...
Have you ever questioned whether Transfermarkt's player values are nonsense?
Well, I took a look at Transfermarkt's squad values (derived from their player values) to determine whether they are a valid proxy for squad spending. They are pretty good!
paulrjohnson.net/blog/testing...
The real question isn’t:
How many Hungarian players are on the pitch?
It’s:
Why are so few good enough to stay there without subsidies?
🧠 Structural reform > symbolic quotas
Full analysis (in HU): rangado.24.hu/magyar_foci/...
Here’s the hard truth:
Hungary doesn’t produce enough top-tier players.
So local ones are overpaid,
Foreigners are still needed,
And the MLSZ keeps subsidizing a broken pipeline.
And what about export success?
🇭🇺 Only 10 Hungarian players appeared in Europe’s Top 5 leagues this season.
🇷🇸 Serbia: 38
🇭🇷 Croatia: 27
🇨🇿 Czechia: 21
🇵🇱 Poland: 17
🇦🇹 Austria: 15
🇸🇮 Slovenia: 12
🇸🇰 Slovakia: 11
In 2024, 56% of all foreign-player minutes in NB I go to non-EU players. The MLSZ could easily cap them – but doesn’t. Because removing them would NOT benefit Hungarians, but cheaper EU imports.
12.05.2025 14:16 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Meanwhile, clubs with more foreigners dominate the league. Ferencváros, Puskás Akadémia, and Győr all fall short of the quota – yet sit atop the table. Why?
That shows, simply:
foreign players are cheaper and better.
You might think: “Fine, but at least they develop.”
Well… not really. The average U21 minutes per match in NB I:
📅 2020/21: 79.0 mins
📅 2023/24: 79.8 mins
Zero actual progress, despite massive funding.
This creates a perverse incentive:
💰 Clubs are rewarded for fielding U21 Hungarians
📉 But the talent pool is small
💸 Prices skyrocket
➡️ You (technically we, the taxpayers) pay more for less.
Because the system is broken – and this new policy doesn’t fix it. In fact, it may deepen the problem. Here’s why:
👉 quality Hungarian players are scarce
👉 demand is inflated by subsidies
👉 result: overpriced, average talents.
Currently, more than half of NB I clubs already meet this new rule. Even the U21-minute quota (2970 mins/season) is reached by 50% of the league. So why the outrage from clubs like Ferencváros and Újpest?
12.05.2025 14:15 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Hungary’s football federation (MLSZ) is doubling down on its youth policy: from 2026, clubs will only receive full funding if 5 Hungarians – including 1 U21 player – are on the pitch on average.
Sounds bold? Let’s check the numbers. 🧵
#Arsenal are just the 4th side to eliminate Real Madrid from a 2 legged European Cup/Champions League knockout tie by an aggregate margin of 4+ goals:
◎ 1988-89 SF (1-6 v Milan)
◎ 2008-09 Last 16 (0-5 v Liverpool)
◎ 2022-23 SF (1-5 v Man City)
◉ 2024-25 QF (1-5 v Arsenal)
Arsenal are first team ever to win each of their first two games against Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabéu in all competitions.
17.04.2025 00:34 — 👍 200 🔁 20 💬 1 📌 3
www.playthegame.org/news/footbal...
No holding back in this piece!
I think most football investments are terrible deals that are bound to fail.
my first time at San Siro last night. Really enjoyed watching this Inter side: old-school yet innovative, solid yet fluid. They’re very different from the other three sides left in the competition and that might help them.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/628...
In renewing its Rwanda sponsorship, Paris Saint Germain just signalled to the world that it doesn't a give a fig about what's happening in Congo. The sheer cynicism of sports organisations whenever money is involved is always impressive. en.psg.fr/teams/club/c...
17.04.2025 07:20 — 👍 40 🔁 20 💬 4 📌 0
