World Cup 2022: Can Hungary Qualify?

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This summer, the delayed Euro 2021 international tournament will kick off. Hungary will have the honor of staging several of the games, but the men’s national team won’t be there. That’s a great shame for the country, and one that the nation’s soccer fans will be hoping to avoid when the World Cup rolls around in 2022. Because of the delay with the Euro tournament, the qualification period is being compressed into a comparatively short window. That means we’ll soon know whether Hungary will be involved or not, with the first fixtures scheduled to take place this month.

Hungary, as anyone who follows football knows, is not fancied as a top contender for the tournament. According to most bookmakers, they’re not even fancied to qualify for the finals, let alone be a force when things kick off in Qatar next year. Bookmakers often get things wrong, though. They’re not forecasters; they’re gamblers. There’s a reason that betting on sports belongs to the same category as playing slots UK. A little knowledge might mean you have a better chance of winning a sports bet than you do an online slots jackpot, but it’s still possible to upset the odds either way. Someone who bets a dollar or two at an online slots website is just as likely to hit the jackpot as someone who spends ten times that much.

A “small” football team can sometimes overcome a “big” one in just the same way.

With luck on their side, qualification for the World Cup is an online slots jackpot that Hungary can win.

In order to do that, though, the team has to overcome its competition within qualifying group C. Let’s look at who those teams are and assess Hungary’s chances of overcoming them.

England

England will start as favorites to win the group and will almost certainly do so. This is probably the best England team of the past thirty years. They reached the semi-finals of the last World Cup and are considered among the favorites for the Euro 2021 tournament. The press talk of them as England’s new “Golden Generation.” It isn’t hard to see why. Harry Kane is probably the best out-and-out striker in the world. Jadon Sancho, Mason Greenwood, Phil Foden, and Jude Bellingham are among the world’s greatest young players. Jack Grealish is an outstanding player. They’re a little weaker at the back, but that probably won’t matter when they carry so much goal threat. Hungary would do well to scrape a point against England at home, but they should look elsewhere for wins.

Poland

If we accept that England is going to finish in first place, Poland is the team that Hungary should be the most wary of in the race for second place. Poland will have every intention of making that place their own and every reason for believing they’ll secure it.

They might not have world-famous players in every position like England does, but they do have Robert Lewandowski, and so long as they can get the ball to him in front of goal, they’re in with a chance in any match they play.

Jan Bednarek is a solid defender and in Lukasz Fabianski and Wojciech Szczesny, they have two outstanding goalkeepers. Nevertheless, a win and a draw against Poland is what Hungary has to aim for if they’re going to qualify.