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Hungary is hardly short of football royalty, but you have to go back generations to a time when the Mighty Magyars boasted some of the most regal talent in global football.
Little wonder then, that Dominik Szoboszlai’s performances in the Liverpool midfield have been a source of enormous national pride in Budapest and beyond this season.
Hungary’s football-crazy public suddenly have a modern role model that young footballers are falling over themselves to emulate, a fact that MTK Budapest’s academy chief, Zsolt Szekely, witnesses first hand every time he goes onto the training pitch at one of the country’s most famous football institutions.
Szekely was Szoboszlai’s coach during his time in the Hungarian capital and although he’s quick to downplay his own role in developing a player he describes as ‘special’, he can’t overstate just how big an impact he continues to have at MTK – nine years after leaving the club.
“The fact that he’s the best player at Liverpool has a great impact in Hungary – the players see they have the chance for such a career,” he tells the Independent. “So many children are starting to play football because of him.”
That’s hardly surprising given his recent performances at Anfield. The 24-year-old has been outstanding in Arne Slot’s midfield as Liverpool have continued to set the pace, both in the Premier League and in Europe.
For a country which has been lacking in outstanding exports since the golden age of the likes of Ferenc Puskas, Nandor Hidegkuti and Zoltan Czibor, Szoboszlai’s performances have set pulses racing in this corner of Eastern Europe.
And Szekely explains that the rise of a player signed by Liverpool for a reported £60m from RB Leipzig in July 2023, carries deep symbolism at MTK.
“To be honest, it’s a little bit funny,” he says. “As we won 6-3 against England (at Wembley in November 1953), we played a special football style that came from Jimmy Hogan.
“He was the coach of MTK Budapest – he was the first to play the MTK style and the national team played the same way. Now we’re doing that again, we’re playing the same way.
“Every team at MTK plays in the same style, they call it the Barcelona style, but it’s not, it’s MTK style!
“Are there similarities between Szoby and Puskas? Well, I think he’s something special. He can be the next Puksas but he doesn’t want to be, he only wants to be the first Szoby.”
There will be plenty of future players, inside and outside of Hungary, modelling their game on a midfield dynamo whose battery never appears in danger of running flat.
“His energy is incredible,” says Georges Leekens, the former Hungary manager who first brought Szoboszlai into the international fold. “He was very young, but you could see that he had this vision, this ability to create something. You could see that this was a player of the future.
“In Hungary, it’s tough. You think of football and you automatically think of the great names of the past, it’s like every Hungarian team is compared to that Puskas team. But you can’t keep looking back – you have to look to the future and you have to create a team with your own players.
“He was brought in (to the senior Hungarian set-up) early, maybe too early, but that’s better than waiting too long in my opinion.
“You learn by playing matches, you learn by playing against the biggest countries in world football. For me, he’s a leader – and these players don’t come along very often. He was too young to take the national team in his hands back then. Now, as I think you’ve seen with Liverpool this season, he’s ready.”
Szoboszlai was named Hungary’s captain in November 2022 and skippered the side at Euro 2024 in Germany last summer, the third successive time the country has reached the European Championship finals. Now, all eyes are on him again as Hungary attempt to make it to a World Cup for the first time since 1986.
“40 years is a very long time – there are generations of Hungary football fans who have never seen us at the tournament,” says Gabor Kiraly, the former Crystal Palace keeper and a man who won 108 caps for his country. “If we’re going to get to the World Cup again then it’s pretty clear that Dominik is going to be key for us. He’s a very special guy, and a very special footballer.
“I think, during my time, Zoltan Gera, who played for West Brom and Fulham was probably the outstanding player, but for this generation there’s only one player that the kids are pretending to be on the playground or on the training pitch, and that’s Szoboszlai.”
Szekely recalls that if the Liverpool midfielder lacked one quality as a young player, it was pace. That’s no longer a concern. Everything else, meanwhile, was in place long before he left MTK and signed for Red Bull Salzburg. He would make his full professional debut in Austria’s second tier for FC Liefering, the club’s reserve team, in August 2017. By 2019/20 he was named the player of the season in the Austrian Bundesliga.
“He would work so hard with his father,” says Szekely. “He would train before training and then train again as soon as training had finished. His dad and him would work, work, work. Dominik wouldn’t have a smart phone, he wouldn’t have a Facebook profile – it was football, football, football!”
Watching him play, you get the feeling that it’s almost a disappointment every time the referee blows the full-time whistle, and that given the choice, he would just continue having a kickabout on the pitch with a few Anfield season-ticket holders instead of showering off and heading home.
The hours and hours of work have paid off handsomely. And as Liverpool close in on the title, this very modern midfielder is providing a timely reminder that Hungary’s future could one day be as bright as its glittering past.
