Vektor

First the heat in Budapest and now the teams almost drowned in Munich, what's next if we somehow qualify, a tornado? So far I think we are playing even better than against France, it would be miracle if our team can keep this up for a full match, but it might be possible.

It looks like there were no clashes between Hungarian and German fans in Munich, so at the very least that was avoided. Still, I find this entire situation baffling and a terrible look for Germany and Western Europe. You are using an international sport competition to make a big political statement. Imagine if Orbán would have done the same thing and made some big nationalistic event out of the EUROs with all the bells and whistles of his anti-Brussels campaign that he did in previous years. Or if China would have pro-socialist / anti-West propaganda everywhere during Beijing 2022. You are disrespecting the will and freedom of millions of Hungarians, while you are also helping Orbán to win his next election. If you are thinking that this will help your cause, you couldn't be more wrong. Just today new polls from a reliable pollster shows that the support for Orbán and his party is on the rise in Hungary, and they took the sample before the effects of the last few days kicked in.

Spain has been so disappointing that I am hoping Slovakia will eliminate them, this might be the best chance for a big upset in the group stage. It definitely feels like a better opportunity than us against Germany, mostly because the Germans already proved that they can play well at this event, while Spain... not so much.

This picture needs to be updated, Ronaldo doesn't hold a water bottle in his hands.

Orbán's facebook account has been spammed with Pride flags in the comments of his posts, it's mostly done by foreigners: https://www.facebook.com/pg/orbanviktor/posts/ I mean... this will only make him happy that he finally "made it" into the club with Putin and Erdogan. It also looks quite bad that people are spamming posts that are about the funeral of Marcell Jankovics, who's one of our greatest animated film directors ever (you should watch Son of the White Mare if you like less conventional animated films, it's a very highly regarded piece of art everywhere around the world)

Yeah, he has three decades of experience and he knows it very well how to play to his base. He isn't invincible, his biggest weakness is that he isn't that great at debates, he famously lost the last Hungarian election debate in 2006 which was one of the reasons why he lost that election. He really only won one election where we had a close race (1998), while he lost two (2002, 2006), so 2022 can be interesting as long as the united opposition finds a good, charismatic leader who understands Hungarians and knows how to win an election.

I think it has chanced how people view our chances of qualification in Hungary after the previous match, it went from "no chance in hell" to "maybe???". You can easily guess what I am expecting after I have been pessimistic about our chances for the entire group stage. My only wish is that the EURO doesn't with a big loss for Hungary this time, I am afraid that the team might be tired, the match against France in that heat was visibly really exhausting for them. This is the part where I should say "I will eat my shoe if we beat Germany in Munich and qualify for R16", but I am no betting man.

I went with "I don't know" as it depends on if our older athletes can still win. The obvious negative example is Katinka Hosszú, she was ready to win two more gold medals pre-COVID, and now she will be lucky if she wins one. The positive example is Michelle Gulyás in pentathlon, she has matured into a top class athlete in the last year. We might also never had that taekwondo quota and possible medal chance if Salim would be one year younger. There can also be some young Hungarians in swimming who can perform better this year than in 2020.

Meanwhile two Hungarians clubs (Ferencváros, MTK) announced that their stadiums in Budapest will be lit up in national colors to support the Hungarian team, but obviously it's a response to what the German cities are doing. As I said earlier, this entire thing just reinforced the supporters of Orbán that they are fighting "the good fight" against foreign countries and a foreign ideology. And yeah, I doubt that this is a good thing for the opposition one year before the election, Orbán got his fight for conservative values again, just like the migrant crisis for the previous election which helped him tremendously. It's also shifts focus from "Orbán vs. opposition" to "Orbán vs. Western Europe", which is something that has reinforced in Hungary many times that he's untouchable as he's a famous politician among EU leaders while most of the opposition leaders are not even all that well-known in Hungary.

"shudder at word queer" Hm, I thought that "queer" is now an accepted term to the describe non-heterosexual and trans people and has lost its derogatory meaning, which made sense to me because I don't really like using an acronym to name a group of people, plus "LGBT" isn't inclusive enough as there are other kind of people inside this community who none of these 4 letters apply to.

It should be Danuta Kozák, she's a 5 time Olympic champion at this point and she's one of the greatest athletes ever in canoe sprint, her 3 gold medals in Rio were an amazing achievement.

The main issue with all of this is that we don't have enough trans athletes to create more categories besides "Men" and "Women". There's a similar solution to this, but I am afraid trans people would see it as degrading: having them compete at the Paralympics where we have many different categories anyway. The issue with this is that Paralympics is officially for disabled people and being trans isn't a disability. If IOC can rebrand the Paralympics to be for "special" athletes who fall outside of the norm what's considered eligible for the normal Games, maybe it wouldn't be hurtful for trans people to compete there in their own category. Or maybe crate a queer Olympics where trans people can have their own events. That might actually be more fun for them.

Yay, I am not dying from boredom tonight. I was afraid that the teams will play it very safe until around the last 15 minutes of the match, but thankfully that's not the case.

Let's see if these matches will be even more boring than the second round in Group D. If the answer to that is yes... well, in that case we might actually die from boredom tonight.

I have only started these discussions here and not in the Politics thread because this is a matter on how the event itself is organized. It is also a news that has been reported by all the leading news organizations and it's also dominating the discourse on EURO2020 (or at least that's what I am seeing on Reddit and Twitter). And it's unprecedented in many ways at a major international sport event and raises questions about activism at such events. Edit: But yeah, this went on for too long, I have already switched to the Politics thread when I felt like it became too much of an "offtopic". I will bring the discussions about similar matters to that thread next time.

I just don't believe in sanctions against internal political decisions, especially in cases where the population of the country is clearly on the side of the government who have been democratically elected. This is also why it's incredibly silly to see people claim that Orbán is a dictator, he and his policies are the product of Hungarian freedom. I personally don't agree with where that freedom led us, but it is what it is, at least it's not something that was forced on the country from people living far from us. And the EU doesn't have the right to punish its members for ideological differences, that goes against the fundamental purpose of this economical union. Orbán is absolutely right when he says that we didn't enter the union to change our views and adopt Western liberal ideals, we (as in both Hungary and the EU) did it for the money. The real reason for any kind of sanctions would be the massive corruption that Orbán has enabled in the country, but you don't see protest against that in Western Europe, most likely because Westerns politicians would have a hard time explaining how the EU fueled that corruption and was fine with it for over a decade in a system so broken you start to wonder how much money Germans and other Western Europeans made on this deal if Orbán and his party became so rich. They either made a same amount of money or even more on it than Orbán or they are suckers, but I believe that the people leading Western Europe aren't suckers and know how to become even more rich, just like Orbán. We will get invited to all the parties as long as the EU still makes money on this.

Following up on this from the EURO2020 thread: Sanctions would be ridiculous against a (likely) popular law from a popular government of a sovereign country. It would also help Orbán to win a couple of more elections, he would double down on the notion that liberalism is an invading ideology that other countries want to force us to follow, similarly to how communism was forced on Hungarians by foreigners for many decades. This is what Orbán wants, more focus on a "liberalism vs. conservatism" debate which he can easily win in Hungary, and less focus on stuff that can lose him a lot of votes, like our growing debt to China and all other kinds of corruption. This is why the united opposition is a mix of ideologies, including conservatives who support that anti-LGBT law, that's the only way there's a chance for a win against a major right-wing party in Hungary.

Surprisingly UEFA did the right thing and didn't allow the Germans to light up the stadium in rainbow colors for the next match. And unsurprisingly a lot of idiots can't comprehend what this is about and are calling the UEFA either homophobic or hypocritical. It's one less opportunity for Orbán to rally his voters against liberalism, but his media will likely still use the protests in Western Europe against his law to gain popularity in Hungary, which he easily can as I think the law is more popular than any progressive Hungarian would like to admit.

John Oliver is the #1 most respected variety show host in America and has won their Primetime Emmy Awards multiple times, the American TV industry thinks of him as the very best the country can offer in terms of TV journalism.

That v match can be an epic snooze fest, there will be no reason whatsoever for either teams to push for the win.

A lot of teams have already qualified with this for R16: 5 spots left for the other teams.

Updated rugby 16 teams 11 teams 9 teams 8 teams 7 teams 6 teams 5 teams 4 teams 3 teams 2 teams 1 team Returning Rio2016 teams Gained quotas Lost quotas M Football (16/16) W Football (12/12) M Basketball (8/12) W Basketball (12/12) M Volleyball (12/12) W Volleyball (12/12) M Handball (12/12) W Handball (12/12) M Water polo (12/12) W Water polo (10/10) M Field hockey (12/12) W Field hockey (12/12) M Rugby (12/12) W Rugby (12/12) Baseball (5/6) Softball (6/6)

With very likely having 38 Hungarians in swimming, it looks like we will have our largest Olympic team since Beijing, the team is already bigger than in London and Rio and we will also get additional quotas in Athletics. My guess is that the final number will be around 170-172.

https://www.nemzetisport.hu/tokio-2020/tokio-2020-34-uszo-biztosan-utazik-az-olimpiara-2833931 38 fős a magyar úszó csapat. Négyen még varnak arra, hogy a B-szint elég legyen, de szerintem ők is várhatóan ki fognak jutni. Rio Tokyo Diff Archery - 1 +1 Athletics Marathon/RW 8 2 -6 Badminton 1 2 +1 Boxing 2 1 -1 Canoe Slalom - 1 +1 Canoe Sprint 15 17 +2 Cycling Mountain Bike 1 2 +1 Cycling Road - 1 +1 Diving 1 - -1 Fencing 9 10 +1 Gymnastics Artistic 2 1 -1 Gymnastics Rhythmic - 1 +1 Handball - 14 +14 Judo 8 7 -1 Karate - 1 +1 Modern Pentathlon 4 4 Rowing 3 1 -2 Sailing 5 4 -1 Shooting 8 4 -4 Swimming 37 34 -3 Table Tennis 3 5 +2 Taekwondo - 1 +1 Tennis 2 3 +1 Triathlon 4 4 Water Polo 26 24 -2 Weightlifting 1 1 Wrestling 8 6 -2 148 152 +4 Athletics 11 6 -5 159 158 -1

The Swimming Olympic team Open Water (2) Kristóf Rasovszky Anna Olasz Men (21) Péter Bernek - 400 medley Richárd Bohus - 100 back, 4x100 medley László Cseh - 200 medley Gergely Gyurta - 1500 free Balázs Holló - 4x200 free Péter Holoda - 4x100 medley Dávid Horváth - 100 breast, 200 breast (not official yet, OST) Ákos Kalmár - 800 free, 1500 free Tamás Kenderesi - 200 fly Benedek Kovács - 4x100 mix medley Dominik Kozma - 200 free, 4x100 free, 4x200 free Hubert Kós - 200 medley, 4x100 medley Maxim Lobanovszkij - 50 free Richárd Márton - 4x100 mix medley Kirstóf Milák - 100 fly, 200 fly, 4x100 free, 4x200 free Nándor Németh - 100 free, 200 free, 4x100 free, 4x200 free Szebasztián Szabó - 100 free, 100 butterfly, 4x100 free Tamás Takács - 4x100 medley Ádám Telegdy - 100 back, 200 back Dávid Verrasztó - 400 medley Gábor Zombori - 400 free, 4x200 free Women (15) Eszter Békési - 200 breast Katalin Burián - 100 back, 200 back Fanni Fábián - 200 free, 4x200 free (not official yet, OST) Fanni Gyurinovics - 4x100 mix medley Petra Halmai - 4x100 mix medley Katinka Hosszú - 200 back, 200 fly, 200 medley, 400 medley Zsuzsanna Jakabos - 4x200 free Boglárka Kapás - 200 fly, 4x200 free Ajna Késely - 400 free, 800 free, 1500 free, 4x200 free Viktória Mihályvári-Farkas - 1500 free, 400 medley Dalma Sebestyén - 100 fly, 200 medley Petra Senánszky - 50 free, 100 free (not official yet, OST) Anna Sztankovics - 100 breast (not official yet, OST) Laura Veres - 4x200 free Evelyn Verrasztó - 4x200 free Overall 38 Hungarian swimmers in Tokyo, largest Hungarian team ever in this sport IF the 4 swimmers with OSTs will qualify, which I think is very likely.