Ferenc Puskás’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter became Hungarian citizens! – PHOTOS
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced on Friday that the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of the legendary Hungarian football player, Ferenc Puskás, became Hungarian citizens. Interestingly, Puskás would have celebrated his 95th birthday this Friday.
Ferenc Puskás is a world legend
According to blikk.hu, Réka Damborena Puskas and Ane de Juan Damborena received their Hungarian citizenship in the Bozsik Aréna, Budapest. Réka is the granddaughter, while Ane is the great-granddaughter of Ferenc Puskás, the famous Hungarian football player and lead attacker of the Hungarian Golden Team.
The minister started his speech with a question: What makes a nation great? “It does not depend on its territory or population, raw materials or military power. There is a much more important index showing that a nation could give a legend to the world. A legend who could make happy not only their own compatriots but also other people around the globe” – Szijjártó continued.
According to Nemzeti Sport, he added
“it is great for a small country to be able to give the whole world a legend.
I travel a lot, and I realize that Ferenc Puskás is still known everywhere today. At the time, it was ‘sacrilegious’ in the ministry that I took football balls signed by Uncle Öcsi with me instead of porcelain intended as official gifts.
And wherever I returned, I saw that this ball was either on display in the main place of the ministry, or my colleague whispered that he took it home to his children..
It may be strange to talk about what Ferenc Puskás had to do with the Foreign Ministry, but Real Madrid legend Alfredo Di Stéfano said: Ferenc Puskás was not only a player but also a man, he was the best as a person too, he tried to help all Hungarians, and he was like an embassy in one person.“
Love for Hungary passed to daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter
Szijjártó said that Puskás and Hungary have an equivalent meaning in many parts of the world. He was an ambassador of his country around the globe without being nominated as one. And he still is. He added that Puskás was a real Hungarian man. Even though the communist dictatorship wanted to kick him out of the nation he did intend to return. And he passed that love for Hungary to his successors.
Puskás is not only one of the greatest football players in the world but a good man. Therefore, his opponents always respected him, the minister cleared.
The descendants of Ferenc Puskás’s former teammates were also present at the event. The ladies were greeted with love by Edina Grosics, daughter of Gyula Grosics, Jenő Buzánszky Jr., and Péter, son of József Bozsik after whom the stadium is named.
György Szöllősi, editor-in-chief of Nemzeti Sport, opened the ceremony with a speech as the ambassador of Puskás Affairs: “According to a 1957 law, the Presidential Council of the Hungarian People’s Republic could revoke Hungarian citizenship from anyone who had seriously violated the loyalty to the government. This punished those who had fled abroad, or defected, at the time.
Strangely enough, however,
Ferenc Puskás was not deprived of his Hungarian citizenship even when he acquired the Spanish – in 1962,
he already played for that national team at the World Cup in Chile. Hungarian state security launched treason proceedings against him and kept a file on him – on him who perhaps did the most for the reputation of Hungary in the twentieth century. When he moved back to Hungary after the regime change and became the Hungarian national team’s head coach, he considered it important that his documents were in order again, and he received his Hungarian passport and identity card again.
I think his granddaughter first mentioned she wanted to be a Hungarian citizen when she watched and wept through the Puskás musical last summer in Szeged.
I understand that Réka’s sister Elisabeth will soon apply for Hungarian citizenship as well.
Perhaps she does not have to prove much that there are Hungarian citizens among her ancestors… “
Read alsoFerenc Puskás’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter became Hungarian citizens! – PHOTOS
Source: Blikk, Nemzeti Sport
A very great football player , very respected in Dublin when I was a child