"No country can disregard its successful former players and put aside its own traditions, and accordingly highly respected retired football players and coaches should be held in especially high esteem" – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told Duna TV after attending Olympic bronze medallist and former national football team coach Ferenc Kovács’s 80th birthday celebrations.

"In today's modern game, all the training materials are available online and the great teams can be watched on television, and so all the knowledge required for football to be successful can be acquired from the media these days", the Prime Minister said, adding that it seems, however, that "the building blocks do not want to combine to form a solid structure". One reason is that no country can disregard its own heritage and its former great players, as they are the ones who can cement the blocks together, he stated. "Ferenc Kovács belongs to a generation which still knows that to be successful in football we need to train good people who also happen to be good at football", the Prime Minister continued, expressing his belief that this is what must be passed on to young coaches by members of the older generation.

Ferenc Kovács was the only Hungarian to take part in international cup final matches both as a player, with his team MTK in the 1964 European Cup Winners' Cup, and as a coach with Videoton in the 1985 UEFA Cup.

(Prime Minister’s Office)