Puskás Academy Stadium Inaugurated In Hungary
- 23 Apr 2014 9:00 AM
The Pancho Arena of the Ferenc Puskás Football Academy in the village of Felcsút was inaugurated on Monday. The stadium located in the village near Budapest where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán owns a cottage, and built at a cost of 3.8 billion forints (EUR 12.4m), meets the UEFA 2 standards, making it suitable to host play-off rounds and matches between national teams.
As part of the event opened by former President of Hungary and member of the International Olympic Committee, Pál Schmitt, Orbán unveiled a statue of Ferenc Puskás.
Captains of the six teams of the Puskás Suzuki Cup for under-17 footballers, Spain’s Real Madrid, Greece’s Panathinaikos, Croatia’s Dinamo Zagreb, Australia’s Melbourne Football Club, Hungary’s Budapest Honvéd and the Ferenc Puskás Football Academy, laid wreaths at the statue.
Orbán, the founder of the academy, said that said young people could to “gain strength from [Puskás] and see how it was possible for a country boy to turn into a celebrated star”.
Leftist opposition Democratic Coalition and E-PM activists held a protest at the stadium, insisting that the money spent on the stadium could have been turned towards other, more pressing needs.
Source www.hungarymatters.hu
Follow that link to sign-up for MTI’s twice-daily newsletter.
LATEST NEWS IN sport