- Viktor Orban’s Support for TSC: A Unique Football Success Story
- The Hungarian Government’s Influence on Serbian Clubs
- Tensions, Triumph, and Mutual Benefits: The Impact of Hungarian Support
On the surface, there was nothing unusual about Viktor Orban’s attendance at the inauguration ceremony of a new football academy in a rural town in October 2018. The prime minister of Hungary was present to witness the completion of yet another new project. He has long poured immense sums of money into his favorite sport, modernizing its infrastructure while other aspects of government activity regress further into authoritarianism. Orban saw an under-14 event at the €9.5 million facility and gave the victors the trophy.
The twist was that Orban was in a foreign nation. He showed his support for TSC in Backa Topola, a small hamlet in northern Serbia 50 kilometres from Hungary. Many of the 185,000 ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina can petition for citizenship and vote in elections. At the last census, they made up 58% of the club’s surrounding municipality.
TSC had just been promoted to Serbia’s second division at the time of Orban’s opening ceremony. Since then, they have scarcely stopped rising. It is one of the continent’s most astonishing success stories: last season, they broke up the near-permanent duopoly of the Belgrade giants Red Star and Partizan, finishing second in the SuperLiga, and after seven games this season, they reside atop the standings. On Thursday, they will face West Ham at the London Stadium, beginning off a Europa League group stage campaign that at most points in their 110-year history would have been unimaginable.
West Ham is an overwhelming favorite, but TSC’s identity may be more difficult to determine.
“”Hungarians helped this Serbian club reach this level,” claims TSC president Janos Zsemberi. “The Hungarian government aided us, and we have their backing as a result of the Hungarian community that resides here and in the surrounding area. However, we’re a Serbian club.”
Rich businessman Zsemberi was crucial to the 2013 rebirth of TSC. They had been a competent presence in Yugoslavia’s second and third divisions under numerous prefixes but fell into disrepair in the early 2000s known as AIK. The late Ferenc Arok, a local and former Australia national team coach who became Orban’s football guru, helped build relationships with Hungary’s political elite. MOL, the Hungarian oil and gas corporation, sponsors TSC, the FA partially funds its academy, and a €30 million funding injection has covered renovation.
It is a figure unabashedly affirmed by Zsemberi, who cites the two-year-old completion of the smart but diminutive TSC Arena with roughly half those funds. Their impressive young manager, Zarko Lazetic, has built on the work of Zoltan Sabo, who died in December 2020 after guiding TSC to their first Europa League qualifiers, and the club’s work is a model of transparency in a Serbian football scene that tends to be chaotic and corrupt. “We love to learn from others,” says Zsemberi. “It is simple for someone who wishes to learn how to improve themselves. However, the issue in Serbia is that few people desire to learn new topics.”
They have access to an abundance of minds. TSC works closely with Puskas Academy, a lavish project situated across the border in Orban’s hometown of Felcsut with its successful senior team, and the network extends further.
There are greater populations of Hungarians in Slovakia and Romania, where similarly well-funded football projects have sprung up in these communities.
Hard borders offer soft authority and little resistance. The Transylvanian club Sepsi has been extensively financed by the Hungarian government and companies; having risen through the system since its inception in 2011, they have won the last two Romanian Cups and narrowly missed out on the Conference League group stage this season. After nearly a decade of involvement with Oszkar Vilagi, the deputy CEO of MOL and a close associate of Orban, DAC Dunajska Streda, a previously unremarkable club south-east of Bratislava in Slovakia, has become a consistent title contenders.
The more established Croatian club Osijek returned to European competition in 2016 after Lorinc Meszaros, the oligarch who oversees the operations of the Puskas Academy, entered the picture and spent significantly. Other, less prominent organizations and academies abroad also receive assistance from Hungary.
“We all receive money from the same sources, so we know each other from those meetings,” Zsemberi explains. “Our coaches and athletes share their experiences and can always learn something new. I adore this type of cooperation, and I hope we will continue to enhance it.” It is not multi-club ownership, but common ties cannot be avoided. Some of the benefits for Orban are obvious: by constructing gleaming, efficient football facilities and structures that have few competitors in the region, Hungarian nationalism and economic clout among its ethnic communities become significantly more pronounced. At a time when satisfaction with public services is low, the quantity of money that his country’s taxpayers are effectively sending abroad has not necessarily escaped notice at home.
The triumph of the arrivistes will inevitably inflame local tensions.
In January of last year, a match between Sepsi and Universitatea Craiova in Romania was abandoned due to anti-Hungarian chanting by visiting supporters. TSC has also not been immune. Nenad Lukic, whose goals propelled them into Europe before he moved to Honved and his current club Changchun Yatai, recalls hearing opposing supporters at away games chanting “Hungarians, Hungarians” on a few occasions. “However, nobody cared about that. We paid no heed to that moron.”
In general, Serbians like TSCs, especially compared to others. They offer hope to people seeking a way out of a seemingly hopeless situation in a country with badly maintained fields and stadiums, underfunded clubs, and unpaid athletes. Lukic states, “People recognize a healthy sports project in which the club president invests a great deal of money and energy.
Orban and his allies have struck a chord by providing success-starved regions with what they desire.
Djordje Lakic, a TSC fan since the club’s lower-division days and a former footballer, explains, “I know there are some Serbs who say they don’t want to support TSC because it’s funded by the Hungarian government.” “However, I always ask them why no one from Serbia has done so previously. Why they, as local Serbs, did not organize and raise funds to assist the club? They had plenty of time to plan their moves.”
Possibly, although they would not have shared Orban’s political motivation. For the time being, TSC serves as a bridge between two countries that have strengthened their political relations under the leadership of Orban and Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, who last year confirmed a strategic partnership. The majority of the players on the team this season are ethnic Serbs, and the working language is Serbian.
TSC, who lost to Braga in the Champions League quarterfinals, is unlikely to make an impression in a group with Olympiakos and Freiburg. However, Lazetic’s squad is capable of playing bold, slick attacking football and raising concerns.
Zsemberi provides a prompt response to another, which is rare at this stage. When TSC takes the pitch against West Ham, will they represent Serbia or Hungary? “Both countries,” is his response. “Both the Serbian and Hungarian ambassadors have accepted our invitations to be our visitors in London. Our nation is now Serbia-Hungary.”
