Coach Rossi: This will go down in Hun­gar­i­an foot­ball history

Goals from Ádám Sza­lai and András Schäfer twice gave Hun­gary a shock lead over Ger­many, but the home team found an answer both times in Munich to secure their pas­sage to the Round of 16 and knock Hun­gary out of the Euro­pean Championship. 

Hun­gary coach Mar­co Rossi named an unchanged line­up from Saturday’s 1 – 1 draw with France for their third and final group-stage fix­ture away against Ger­many, mean­ing a 3−5−2 for­ma­tion with Loic Nego at right wing-back and Atti­la Fio­la in a now-famil­iar posi­tion on the left. Endre Bot­ka, Willie Orbán and Atti­la Sza­lai formed a tight, three-man defence in front of goal­keep­er Péter Gulác­si with Lás­zló Klein­heisler, Ádám Nagy and András as a cen­tral mid­field trio behind strik­ers Roland Sal­lai and cap­tain Ádám Szalai. 

The Hun­gar­i­an team played mirac­u­lous­ly in Munich, Ger­many suf­fered for the draw 

Undoubt­ed­ly Hun­gary were huge under­dogs – as ever in this so-called ‘group of death’ – but they began in sen­sa­tion­al style, Ádám Sza­lai div­ing to head in Sallai’s search­ing right-wing cross in the 12^th minute after the 24-year old had exchanged pass­es with Klein­heisler in midfield. 

Ger­many cen­tre-back Mats Hum­mels struck the cross­bar with a head­er short­ly after, but aside from that, a plucky Hun­gary held their illus­tri­ous oppo­nent at arm’s length and remained dan­ger­ous on the counter attack. Joachim Löw’s team did man­age to equalise through Kai Havertz in the 66^th minute, his close-range head­er into an emp­ty net com­ing after Hum­mels had beat­en Gulác­si to a free-kick from Joshua Kim­mich, but to their immense cred­it, Hun­gary hit back straight­away, Schäfer beat­ing onrush­ing goal­keep­er Manuel Neuer to Ádám Szalai’s hooked pass and head­ing the ball pow­er­ful­ly into an unguard­ed Ger­many net.

Every inch of ground in their own half was cov­ered by Hun­gary as they sought to sur­vive the final 22 min­utes but unfor­tu­nate­ly Ger­many sub­sti­tute Leon Goretzka’s low, deflect­ed half-vol­ley skid­ded past Gulác­si in the 84^th minute to sal­vage a 2 – 2 draw and con­demn a brave but luck­less Hun­gary to 4^th place in Group F, and thus an end to their Euro­pean Cham­pi­onship campaign.

Ger­many fin­ish behind group win­ners France and run­ners-up Por­tu­gal, thus pro­gress­ing to 2^nd-round clash with Eng­land at Wem­b­ley as one of the four best 3^rd-placed teams across the six groups. “It’s unbe­liev­able that we’re dis­ap­point­ed with a 2 – 2 draw, but of course we are. The play­ers fought three games as lions, nev­er feared the big names, stood face to face, made a coun­try proud. 

No one can com­plain about per­for­mance and atti­tude” told Coach Mar­co Rossi to M4 Sport. 

“We deserved more, it feels real­ly bad to drop out like this, but I’m very proud of the team and the fans. There was a whole coun­try behind us, ”Schäfer said after the match.

They added that the team twice missed 15 min­utes at the Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships, they could have up to five points now, if oth­er­wise. Speak­ing of fans, the offi­cial fan zone looked like this after the goals. Any­ways, we agree with Coach Rossi, he has put togeth­er a team that can real­ly hit and will sure­ly cause a lot of hap­py moments for the Hun­gar­i­an fans! 

Source: dai​lynew​shun​gary​.com