Hungary men to open 2023 against Estonia

The spare time for two friendly matches next year comes due to Hungary being drawn in a five-team qualifying group for the 2024 European Championship in Germany. One of these opportunities will come during the first round of group fixtures and with UEFA insisting on every nation using their restdays to play matches, there was never any doubt that Hungary would be in action at the earliest possible juncture.

Thus, Marco Rossi's team will start the year of 2023 with a home fixture against Estonia on 23rd March. The Baltic nation closed this year with the Baltic Cup, in which Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland were their rivals for the trophy. In the semi-finals of this four-team tournament, they lost to Latvia on penalties before defeating a prospective European qualifying opponent of ours, Lithuania, 2-0. Estonia won their group in division D of the Nations League this year, and will therefore be promoted to division C for the next edition.

"This year we've faced very strong opponents who regularly took the initiative against us, so now we specifically wanted an opponent against whom we will probably have to be progressive and break an organised, established defence", Rossi told mlsz.hu. "Estonia are dangerous, which is clearly shown by the fact that in the summer they played a 0-0 draw with Albania, who defeated us in two World Cup qualifiers. Although most of their players play in the Estonian league, they also have squad members who play for Arsenal, Tottenham and FC Zürich".

The Puskás Aréna will be the venue for this fixture which comes four days before Hungary's opening European Championship qualifier against Bulgaria on 27th March.

The MLSZ has already launched the sale of season tickets for Hungary's 2023 competitive home matches and will soon inform the public of the sale of tickets for this season-opening match between Hungary and Estonia. Already in under a week fans bought 25,000 season tickets for the European Championship qualifiers to be held in the Puskás Arena.