Jun 23, 2024, 17:11 ET
The Magyars took third place in Group A and now must wait for results to advance to the Round of 16
Among the alarm for Barnabás Varga, evacuated from the field on a stretcher after being injured in the 74th minute, in which he was apparently unconscious, Hungary suddenly reached the third position of the Group A of the Euro 2024 with 3 points and a last minute 1-0 victory over Scotlandin the tenth minute of added time, in the penultimate play, through Kevin Csoboth (0-1).
Until minutes before, until he had no choice but to attack, including a shot against the post, Hungary He did not really go for an indispensable victory, which he received with emotion, but also within the concern derived from the event of the match, when Varga was removed from the field, between canvases, awaiting his diagnosis.
His image on the ground, unconscious, triggered the alert on the field in the 68th minute. His teammates quickly realized it, requested assistance, turned his teammate’s body to facilitate his breathing and he was treated on the grass for a few minutes. The place was covered with tarps that recalled previous tragedies, like that tragedy involving Christian Eriksen in 2021 when he vanished on the ground.
Finally, the forward was evacuated from the field on a stretcher, to the applause of the public, after the review of a penalty that the referee did not award. The meeting continued. Perhaps the best sign that the attacker’s condition was not so compromised as to definitively stop the clash. In any case, he was replaced, awaiting medical news informing about the footballer’s condition.
Then his team suddenly won. He had not earned merit until the final stretch, until he went for victory. Until then he played in the tiring rhythm of the draw. It is his first victory in the last nine games of the Euro Cup finals. He had not won in this competition since June 14, 2016. Three victories in his entire history.
Scotland It’s pure fighting. A team that goes into contact, jumps over each ball, fights as if it were the last ball, the most decisive of the match, in each throw, but stays there. In a succession of physical efforts that lack football, judgment, technique, imagination and, above all, the most difficult thing about football: the precision that any rival demands, even more so in the Euro Cup.
Hungary It’s not much more either. Like Scotland goes to the limit. The friction was constant. The falls, the blows, the players on the ground, summed up a low-level first half, with hardly any chances, except that the difference is Dominik Szoboszlai, the best player of all those on the field, the only possibility of altering the folly on the grass, to change the course of a duel that was moving into nothing. And they needed to win.
Among so many obligations, among such circumstances, the two teams were exposed. His offensive capacity, above all, more than his courage. It was a problem of technique, not of momentum or desire. Except for Szoboszlai. He lacked consistency. When he intervened, everything was different, like in a free-kick cross that Orban headed onto the crossbar. The only notable thing, probably in an illegal position having been a goal, in the entire first half. Nothing else.
Sallai also collaborated with Szoboszlai in changing the game, becoming more and more present in the opposite half in the second half, without a single convincing response beyond his home ground. Scotland, who runs and fights a lot, but plays very little. He didn’t need much to go on the counterattack a couple of times and liven up the duel again in the second half.
Nothing out of this world, nothing disturbing for Gulacsi, whose Hungary He did launch the offensive in the final stretch, already in added time when he demanded two stops from Gunn and finished a ball off the post, showing that he could have played much more much earlier, although it was still enough for him to win on Csoboth’s winning counterattack, which made her third in the group amid concern for Varga.
