At home: Was it crazy to organize a Super Cup final in Budapest?

My stomach clenched because the Bavarian Prime Minister had an upset stomach because Bayern fans were heading to the dangerous Hungarian capital for the Super Cup match and because Seville fans had canceled a fifth of their tickets. Because then, obviously, I am also irresponsible for being able to buy a ticket to the Puskás Arena to bring my Bayern fan son to the game.

In the last few days, everyone has voiced their opinion about how embarrassing it is to have a football match in Budapest and even do a ‘human experiment’, so after a while I started to feel uncomfortable about not canceling my tickets. Furthermore, the proliferation of the Super Cup match has become a critical activity for the government in Hungary, if only because the Hungarian government actually does run football matches at unusual discounts.

There is no particular rationality in not having a bigger concert in Hungary, but a bigger football match without any problems, especially if the minister who runs the Prime Minister’s Office also talks nonsense about it. The fact that it is possible to participate in national football matches without essentially precautions, masks and distances also shows that “the prime minister’s favorite sport” is treated separately at home. And if we look at the fact that while Ferencváros fought his last BL national qualifying match with closed doors, but thousands of his fans raged on top of each other outside closed doors, it becomes clear that Cecília Müller could speak to us here for months. about correct hand washing, somewhere NER. -The level of this entire epidemic is not taken so seriously.

The big question, however, was on Thursday whether preventing the spread of the epidemic is taken seriously at UEFA level, and whether one can avoid a crowd at a football match, gasping at each other and then picking up something at the end.

We can remember that barely half a year has passed since Bergamo and its countryside in Italy were captured and plagued by the coronavirus epidemic. It was then that the theory emerged that the Atalanta-Valencia BL match in Milan could have been one of the sources of spread of the infection. Given that this is widespread and the world press treats it almost as a fact, let’s say it quickly: originally it was a theory, experts and city leaders made the suggestion, logical, that if the coronavirus had already spread in the first months of the year. Among the unsuspecting population, the fact that tens of thousands of Bergamo train-buses drove and traveled to the Milan stadium, where the match took place, and then returned home celebrating after the euphoric match, may have contributed to spread the epidemic.

Now, on Thursday, none of the above conditions increased. In fact, I saw the last man without a mask when we bought soft drinks and rodents for the game in Radnóti’s little alphabet, obviously so we don’t have to crowd the stadium buffets. (That’s the responsible explanation. The other is that it was cheaper that way than on the spot). And the last time the tram passed it was someone closer to five feet from me who was not my son. In Thököly út and Istvánmezei út, we met more police officers than amateurs, and we did not queue at Stefánia út’s front door. It didn’t take us a minute to get inside, and that includes ticketing, thermometry, clothing inspection, and hand sanitizing.

In the stadium garden, everyone still wore the mask in a disciplined way, but those who did not speak when entering those sectors. Although a few more fans gathered in the garage, where the team buses passed an hour and a half before the game, there was still plenty of room for everyone. You couldn’t see hordes of beer fanatics gasping and splashing around the neck, the atmosphere was more or less like waiting for a Madredeus concert in front of Müpa.

The Puskás Arena is actually a very nice stadium, we also lost sight of each other, but I wouldn’t discuss it any more now, we can only go to the stadium a little bit. The truth, however, is that anyone who came with the determination that after admission he would not come closer than five feet to anyone else could have figured it out.

The precautions were visible: jars of hand sanitizer were placed in the hallway every 10 to 20 meters, and in the bathrooms, which were otherwise accessible from two sides, only one entrance and one exit were designated so as not to crowd the fans . We didn’t see a line at the buffets, but I didn’t check it during the break.

In our sector, it was clear what distance means: in our row, tickets were issued for five of the 17 chairs: two and one for the two edges, and two more in the middle. But there were rows of 12 chairs where they could only sit on two chairs. The fans weren’t sitting directly behind each other, as we observed. All the vignettes on the unsold chair indicated that sitting was forbidden, and this was absolutely noted by the audience in our quiet Hungarian sector. 90 percent of the stadium was such a quiet Hungarian sector, only a very small part was occupied by the Spanish, who were closer to each other and kept singing. While we may think that this is how they really got infected, but let’s not forget that foreign fans were only able to enter the country with a negative corona test, which reduces the chances of imagining an Atalanta match in Puskás.

During the match, however, the discipline of wearing the mask weakened somewhat, with many putting it under their nose or lowered it entirely under the guise of continually drinking beer. But since almost everyone was getting discouraged with their own partner several feet away from us, it didn’t seem more dangerous than seeing people talking at the bus stop.

Of course, I know that all this also has to do with the fact that if a person is the child of a Bayern supporter, they can organize the facts and experiences at their disposal in a reassuring way. That is probably what happened in my case. Anyone who goes to a rallycross race in the same conditions might think that I put myself at unnecessary risk.

It’s likely that even if there was a transmission of the infection Thursday night, there weren’t many people (there wasn’t really a crowd gathered) and it may never be clear whether it could be tied to a game or a home run. Consequently, I have no idea whether the Super Cup match was suitable for UEFA to test something. I’m pretty sure the players did much better playing so demotivating empty stadiums. Even 16,000 fans with an organizing team of this size are easier to manage and fit better in a huge stadium than 67,000, even I would have said beforehand.