MTK vs. Celtic

MTK coach Sandor Egervari admits his side's Champions League hopes are now dead - even though they still have the trip to Glasgow.

He said: 'Our dreams were ruined tonight. We always knew there was a big gap between Celtic and ourselves but we hoped to make that smaller on the pitch tonight but they were too strong.'
(English, Hungarian wrap-up)

Népstadion is a breathtaking feat of Soviet architecture. The ticket booths are set in the ground like battle bunkers, it's so gigantic that there's no way to get a view of the whole structure from the ground, it's a beautiful place to see the sun set and they play Kraftwerk during warms up and at halftime. Inbetween Kraftwerk, it's the home pitch of MTK, the Hungarian League champions who count leftists, pensioners and Hungarian Jews among their staunchest supporters. Tonight we saw them lose to Celtic in a UEFA Champions league qualifier.

Among the highlights were being turned away from the foreigners-only ticket entrance, the Hungarian commentator who gasped at each of "indisputably self confident" Celtic goals, spicy pumpkin seeds, the second half substition of number 16, known to us as "Zoolander" because of his beautiful looks, quickly followed by the substitution of Celtic's number 3 "Mohammed Sylva", who promptly passed the ball to himself through Zoolander's legs not once, but twice, and a sprinkler flooding the Celtic half of the field during the second half. Lowlights include the abysmal MTK play, as well as the Sieg Heil salute given by the 200+ Hungarian skinheads in the audience for every Celtic goal. They claim it's not a hateful salute, rather it's "from the heart," reminiscent of the Tomahawk Chop.

Because the right-leaning Fradi fans root for any team that's playing the MTK and their Jewish constituency, (Gwen: that's leaning so far right that they're horizontal) they have their own fenced off section of the stadium, and were asked over the PA to remain in their seats for ten minutes following the game. Incidentally, they once burned down the very stands they were sitting in, and their website features a flash animation with a Hungarian rendering of 'YMCA.'

All Hello, Budapest pictures (to the right) and their captions are co authored by Gwen and I.