On Friday evening the Puskás Arena was officially inaugurated before the Hungary-Uruguay friendly football match.
Balázs Fürjes, the government commissioner who was in charge of the construction of the facility said “the inauguration of this facility is complete now that supporters have come here, and have filled and taken possession of this stadium”. He highlighted that the construction works provided jobs for 15,000 Hungarians, and he encouraged supporters to show the Hungarian team what the atmosphere would be like if next year they could play European Championships matches in the stadium.
Before kick-off, Sándor Csányi, President of the Hungarian Football Federation and Gábor Kubatov, President of FTC bade farewell to Zoltán Gera, a member of the Hungarian team capped 97 times who now works as coach of the U21 national team.
At the beginning of the opening ceremony, a number of male and female national football team members were called onto the pitch, including Pál Dárdai, Gábor Király, Béla Illés, István Pisont, Anita Pádár, Gyöngyi Lovász, György Bognár, Antal Nagy, Károly Csapó, Antal Dunai, Gyula Rákosi and Máté Fenyvesi. Hungary’s oldest capped footballer József Raduly aged 92 also walked onto the pitch. He said the former People’s Stadium “was beautiful for us even when it was not in the best state, but this stadium is simply beautiful”.
Zoltán Gera and 93-year-old Nikita Simonyan kicked off the Hungary-Uruguay football match. The latter had last stepped onto the pitch of the former People’s Stadium in 1953 at the opening match between Budapest Honvéd and Spartak Moscow as a footballer of the guest team, and also on that occasion he kicked off the game.
The Puskás Arena will host three group matches and one round of sixteen in next year’s European Football Championships.