Hungarian premier Victor Orban on Tuesday strongly defended Hungarian football fans as the Irish team kneels ahead of the Euro 2020 warm-up match in Budapest to highlight the issue of racial injustice.
“If you are a guest in a country, you understand its culture, you do not irritate the natives, you do not irritate when you come as a guest,” Orban said at a press conference in Budapest. The strong anti-immigrant premier told Hungarian fans who blew the whistle that he “agrees” and that the gesture of kneeling in protest “has no place in a stadium”. “Fans react like they do in general when provoked, they don’t always choose the most beautiful way to do it, but we need to understand the cause,” he insisted.
Premier League players in England have been kneeling before the kick-off since a white police officer shot and killed African American George Floyd in the US last year.
After Tuesday’s game, which ended in a 0-0 draw, Ireland manager Stephen Kenny called Bose “incomprehensible”.