Szoboszlai and the price of kneeling

UEFA and FIFA rules do not allow political messages on fields and in stadiums, and the Hungarian Football Federation agrees.

Szoboszlai Dominik Liverpool Forrás: facebook.com/LiverpoolFC

Dominik Szoboszlai, the most successful Hungarian footballer of our time has recently signed with Liverpool FC. As it has been customary at British teams for years, he also takes the knee before matches. The act that takes barely a few seconds is far from being physically demanding for a top-level athlete. It wound not even be worth mentioning had it not been loaded with a strong political message.

This stupid custom, that is mandatory on the football pitches in Western 'democracies', is intended to be an apologetic gesture of the white man for historic sins committed against people of color. The political message of kneeling before matches is not only unacceptable because it was forced by the violent and impatient Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement but also because political gestures have no place on sports fields.

Furthermore, it is unacceptable because it is a product of a deceitful and disingenuous obsession that claims that white people are sinners because they colonized black people’s countries and some of them were slave traders carrying Africans away from their homeland. BLM activists, however, fail to take note of modern-day slavery, whose beneficiaries are not limited to a certain skin color.

As Magyar Nemzet wrote earlier, the 2018 edition of Global Slavery Index (the global study of modern-day slavery) estimates

the number of people living under slavery-like conditions at 40 million. In Africa, some 9.2 million people are estimated to be living like that. The UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) has established that today there are about three times as many people ‘owned’ by others than the number of those captured and sold in the 350-year era of the transatlantic slave trade.

If the descendants of the erstwhile colonists feel that they have to repent for their ancestors’ sins on the football pitches, we will not stop them. Central European citizens, however, rightly ask what they have to do with it. Hungary has taken up arms many times during its history, fighting wars to defend its independence, but never colonized any people. Why should a Hungarian sportsman take the knee before football matches? Just because it has become trendy after Colin Kaepernick's initiative in 2016? Nonsense.

In Szoboszlai’s defense, we can say that now that he has signed with Liverpool, he has to accept their rules, including kneeling before matches.

We can also say that compared to his monthly salary of about 480 thousand pounds a month, this small gesture is barely even worth mentioning. You can argue in a TV show that ‘decent people’ also joined the party during Socialism in a bid to further their careers, but we also have to remember those who did not do so and did not “think about the money.”

When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban once said that he did not like the kneeling, he said it in the context of the Hungarian national team, and he was perfectly right.

“A Hungarian kneels before God, before his homeland, and if he is proposing to his lover. We don’t want our national teams to kneel but to fight,”said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The Hungarian Football Association (MLSZ) was also right when it recalled that UEFA and FIFA rules did not allow political messages on sports fields and in stadiums, and MLSZ agreed with that.

Also, we can't help but remember Ferenc Puskas, the greatest Hungarian football player of all time, whose era was characterized by completely different political environment both on the East and the West. The striker of the legendary Golden Team raised the bar high for all his successors. In 2004, UEFA named him the greatest Hungarian football player of the preceding half a century, and every year the scorer of the most beautiful goal receives the FIFA award bearing his name. After his death, statues were deservedly erected in his honor, and it is fitting that the former People’s Stadium and the football academy in Felcsut bear his name. 

We love Dominik Szoboszlai. He does not have to do anything with the fact that the Western press, politics and public thinking are characterized by misconceptions and crazy notions. If he was the only player who does not take the knee before Liverpool’s matches, the fans would surely boo him and he would also be scolded by the club managers. 

In addition, he would find himself in the cross hairs of the press, and would eventually be forced to leave the team. We are proud of him because he can play at a level appropriate to his exceptional talent, and bring further glory to Hungarian sport in the most popular game. We wish him to be a worthy successor to the legacy of Ferenc Puskas.

The author is a writer and journalist.

Cover photo: Dominik Szoboszlai signed for Liverpool in July (Photo: Facebook/Liverpool FC).