Hungary

The Story

Hungary is the country every neutral soccer historian has a soft spot for. The Mighty Magyars of the 1950s — Puskás, Kocsis, Hidegkuti — rewrote what football was supposed to look like. They went 32 matches unbeaten. They beat England 6-3 at Wembley in 1953 in a match that permanently broke English football's idea of itself. Then they lost the 1954 World Cup final to West Germany in the Miracle of Bern, and the revolution broke up shortly after. Hungary has not been the same team since, and has not appeared at a World Cup since Mexico 1986. That wait is now 40 years, and it is not ending this summer.

Marco Rossi — the Italian coach hired in 2018, who nobody outside Hungary had heard of — came close. He built around Dominik Szoboszlai, the Liverpool captain-in-waiting, and Willi Orbán at Leipzig, ground through Nations League promotions, reached back-to-back Euros, and made Hungary genuinely competitive in UEFA qualifying. But they finished third in Group F, missed the playoff entirely, and the 40-year World Cup absence stretches on. Szoboszlai, 25 and playing at the highest level of club football, will have to wait until 2030 for his first World Cup. For a player of his caliber, the absence feels like a waste.

The Puskás Arena will be quiet this June while the tournament plays out in North America. The goulash at Armoury in Deep Ellum will still be there, the Unicum will still burn, and the Hungarian diaspora in DFW will watch other nations' matches and think about what might have been. Hungary's history is full of almosts. This is another one.

3 Players to Know

Dominik Szoboszlai

The captain at 25, the midfielder wearing Liverpool's armband in important matches, and the player Hungary has built an entire decade around. He came up at Salzburg under the Red Bull system, moved to Leipzig, then Liverpool paid £60 million for him in 2023. He's now a starter on a Premier League title contender, a full Hungary international since he was 17, and the player who scored the last-minute equalizer against Portugal in qualifying that kept Hungary's dream alive. If Hungary wins a World Cup knockout round in 2026, it starts with a Szoboszlai free kick.

Willi Orbán

The center-back Hungary builds its defense around — 33, Leipzig's captain, born in Kaiserslautern to a Hungarian family and capped by Germany at youth level before choosing Hungary as a teenager. He's now played over a decade at Leipzig, from the Rangnick-era press to the current Marco Rose build, and he's the defensive reference point alongside Attila Szalai. Not flashy. The player Hungarian defenders grow up wanting to be. Also, no relation to the prime minister — a clarification he's had to give in roughly every interview of his career.

Barnabás Varga

The 30-year-old Ferencváros striker — tall, aerial, the old-school center-forward Hungary has been looking for since the Mighty Magyars' Nándor Hidegkuti retired. He scored the header against Scotland at Euro 2024 that nearly finished him (he collided with the Scottish keeper and suffered a traumatic facial fracture) and came back six months later scoring goals again. He's Hungary's leading scorer in qualifying. The fairy-tale player on this team — a late bloomer who was playing in the Austrian second division five years ago and is now his country's starting striker at a World Cup.

The Food

Signature Dish

Goulash (gulyás) is the national soul — a paprika-heavy beef stew cooked long enough that the meat shreds at a glance, served with csipetke (pinched flour dumplings) or crusty white bread. The second pillar is pörkölt, a drier paprika stew, usually with veal or pork, served over nokedli (dumplings similar to spaetzle). Then lángos — deep-fried flat dough the size of a Frisbee, rubbed with garlic and finished with sour cream and grated cheese, the Budapest street-food answer to 2am hunger. The drink is a Unicum (a bitter, black, medicinal herbal liqueur that locals love and tourists flinch at) or an Egri Bikavér (Bull's Blood red wine).

Where to Eat in DFW

Armoury D.E. in Deep Ellum (2714 Elm St) is DFW's closest Hungarian touch — a restaurant-bar that leans Central European with an unapologetic focus on goulash, chicken paprikash, and lángos. The goulash is the traditional version: beef chuck, onions, peppers, celery root, real Hungarian paprika. The room is dim, tin-ceilinged, and appropriately bar-like, with a strong cocktail list and enough Unicum on the back bar to surprise you. Hungary is one of the harder food gaps to fill in DFW — the traveling-Hungarian diaspora is small here — so Armoury is genuinely the best option, not just a compromise.

Fan Culture

Hungarian support is the Carpathian Brigade — the ultras group, the drums, the enormous red-white-green flag that gets unfurled across an entire end, and the chants in a Magyar language that nobody outside Hungary can quickly follow but that you can absolutely sing along to phonetically after the third beer. The Puskás Arena in Budapest is one of the loudest buildings in Europe when it's full — Euro 2020 showed the world. The smell at a watch party is kolbász sausage and fried lángos dough and the strong black coffee Hungarians drink at all hours. Their travel numbers are modest, but the ones who come in June will be vocal, proud, and genuinely shocked to be at a World Cup.