© Dudás Szabolcs

I don't know if there is a precedent in Hungarian public service broadcasting for someone openly announcing his intention to hand out bungs in a live broadcast, still less for the presenter to react not with outrage, demanding an official enquiry, but with an expression of good wishes for the success of the deception. It was extraordinary that someone thought they had the right to spend my tax forints corrupting me using the justification that all this was being done "for my interests." Supposedly, it would be good for me if Hungary were to host the football European Cup. Thanks, but I don't need that kind of help. In fact, I'm disgusted that anybody should present underhand practices as being in the national interest in my name.

My astonishment grew when I heard the hand-wringing and self-justification that followed the decision. Gyarfas, Hungarian Football League president Istvan Kisteleki and the football star Kalman Meszoly affected disbelief. We'd greased the palms of the Romanian, Spanish, Turkish and Cypriot members of the UEFA executive committee in vain. We was robbed - the lucky recipients of the brides didn't keep their word. I've no idea if such deals did take place, but it occurred to me that the Hungarian gentlemen in charge of the bid must live in a strange world if they thought that the word of someone open to bribery could be taken at face value.

Kisteleki took this idea further, saying that Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder, the German member of the UEFA committee, had also broken his promise. "I was indignant. I said I could not believe that something like this could ever happen, since the Hungarian-German relationship is unambiguous," the Hungarian Football League president spluttered. He added: "I can't imagine that a German would turn against a Hungarian." Let's leave aside the fact in one sentence, this grand promoter of a Hungarian-hosted European Championship complained that the quality of the bid had been ignored, and in another that his German colleague had shown insufficient political commitment. But if we've come this far, what is a German sports bureaucrat to do, if, blessed with a degree of historical sensitivity, he has to choose between rendering satisfaction to an Italian, a Hungarian-Croatian or a Polish-Ukrainian bid? From which set of countries is he to beg forgiveness?

Kisteleki was probably reaching in the right direction, however. The thing was, and not for the first time in Hungarian history, he was riding back to front. The princes of Hungarian football, suffering from a certain blindness in matters of foreign policy, didn't recognise that the decision would be heavily influenced by political and geographical logic. Switzerland and Austria are hosting next year's European Championships. Furthermore, Platini, who was elected last year, has said that he wants to see the poorer regions of eastern Europe winning a bigger role. Given all this, only the biased and the ill-informed could have failed to spot that the Hungarian-Croatian bid was fighting an uphill struggle. There would be no point in the 2012 European Championships being held in countries that sit next door to Austria and Switzerland. Further, our two countries are not seen as being in the East, but as central European. They are also richer than Poland and Hungary - and they can't play football.

I suspect that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is happy with this state of affairs, even if she probably knows even less about football. With the EU facing up to some difficult decisions, it makes sense to placate the prickly Poles with a European Championship. Merkel may well have had a quiet word with Mayer-Vorfelder. UEFA has little to lose: if the Poles and the Ukrainians fail to deliver the necsesary infrastructure - not unlikely - then the Italians can easily step in to save the day. Hungary is not in a position to serve as a 'reserve' - as was clearly illustrated by the total of zero votes that we received.

The Hungarian football lobby and its supporters in government responded to the entirely predictable fiasco by complaining that others had managed to bribe even more successfully than they - rather than stopping to think about their own blinkeredness and immoral basic assumptions. This small-mindedness is their problem. Anybody who can get beyond national self-pity can find glimmers of hope in this catastrophe. If the European Championships help stabilise Ukraine, even now teetering on the brink of political crisis, then this will bring benefits to us, to our economy and to our export sector. We won't host the European Championships in 2012, but we now have a much better chance of getting the euro. For the Poles, it's the other way round. Maybe they just scored an own-goal.

GYÖRGYI KOCSIS
(The author works for HVG)