Hungary ease to victory away in San Marino

Hungary head coach Marco Rossi made seven changes from Thursday's 3-3 draw against Poland, goalkeeper Dénes Dibusz coming in for Péter Gulácsi and defender Endre Botka joining Willi Orbán and Attila Szalai behind a whole new, five-man midfield of left winger Kevin Varga, a central midfield trio of Dávid Sígér, Tamás Cseri and Dániel Gazdag, and Loic Nego out on the right. Ádám Szalai and Roland Sallai led the line upfront and it wasn't long before both were heavily involved.

Their first key involvement came after 12 minutes of Hungarian domination of the ball when Sallai drew a foul from Battistini inside the home team's penalty area and his striking partner sent goalkeeper Elia Benedettini the wrong way in dispatching the ball into the bottom-right corner of the goal.

The Freiburg forward was then responsible for Hungary's next big chance, his 19-metre free-kick being handled in the wall by Filippo Fabbri and the referee showing no hesitation in pointing to the penalty spot again. Generously, Ádám Szalai allowed Sallai to take the penalty but although his shot was struck well enough, Benedettini was lightning fast in plunging to his right to divert the ball around the post.

Ádám Szalai twice and his namesake Attila Szali both went close to extending the advantage before the half-time break with headers which flew wide, but there was to be no further addition to the score in a half which didn't quite reach their potential.

There was a clear improvement in the second period with the introduction of Zsolt Kalmár, Hungary moving the ball a bit quicker and creating their first opportunity of the half in the 50th minute when Gazdag slid in Ádám Szalai, but his first-time shot was beaten away by Benedettini.

Just after the hour mark, another substitute László Kleinheisler made a fantastic diagonal burst into the penalty area in time to latch onto Kalmár's lofted pass from the left channel, but the Osijek midfielder's low volley was a few metres off target. Kalmár was at the centre of everything good for Hungary and his low, rasping drive in the 69th minute was tipped around the post by the impressive Benedettini as the visitors sought the comfort of a two-goal cushion. It wasn't far away.

Two minutes later, Botka's cross was headed past a stranded Benedettini by Sallai, clearly relieved to have made up for his earlier penalty mishap, as the game effectively ended as a contest.

Marco Rossi's charges were still looking for more goals though, the 82nd minute seeing Kalmár's header acrobatically cleared off the line by defender Dante Rossi and Sallai's follow-up volley somehow palmed over the crossbar by San Marino's ever-alert goalkeeper.

Five minutes later, Hungary remarkably had their third penalty of the game when Nikolic was fouled by fellow substitute Hirsch and in the absence of the by-now-substituted Ádám Szalai, it was left to stand-in skipper Nikolic to slam the ball high into the net just left of centre and set the result at 3-0.

Hungary now move on to a similarly testing fixture away in Andorra on Tuesday, while San Marino host Albania and the group's two highest-ranked teams, Poland and England face each other at Wembley.