Rossi selects 25-man squad for vital double-header

Rossi's team will take on Bulgaria behind closed doors in Plovdiv on 16 November, before hosting Montenegro three days later in the Puskás Aréna in Budapest. If his side earn at least one point in the two matches, it will mean Hungary qualify automatically for next year's European Championship in Germany. In addition to András Schäfer, players of the calibre of Attila Fiola, László Kleinheisler, Willi Orbán, Roland Sallai, Barnabás Varga and Bálint Vécsei are missing from the current squad due to various ailments. At the same time, Sallai's club Freiburg have received a request asking that, if the attacker's recovery were to progress at a better pace than expected, he be permitted to join up with his national squad.

This time, Rossi has selected a 25-man squad:

Goalkeepers:

Patrik Demjén (MTK Budapest)
Dénes Dibusz (Ferencvárosi TC)
Péter Gulácsi (RB Leipzig)
Péter Szappanos (Paksi FC)

Defenders:

Botond Balogh (Parma)
Endre Botka (Ferencvárosi TC)
Ádám Lang (Omonia Nicosia)
Attila Mocsi (Rizespor)
Attila Szalai (TSG Hoffenheim)
Gábor Szalai (Kecskeméti TE)

Midfielders:

Bendegúz Bolla (Servette FC)
Zsolt Kalmár (Fehérvár FC)
Mihály Kata (MTK Budapest)
Milos Kerkez (Bournemouth)
Ádám Nagy (AC Pisa)
Zsolt Nagy (Puskás Akadémia FC)
Loic Nego (Le Havre AC)
Callum Styles (Barnsley)
Soma Szuhodovszki (Kecskeméti TE)

Forwards:

Martin Ádám (Ulszan Hyundai)
Kevin Csoboth (Újpest FC)
Dániel Gazdag (Philadelphia Union)
Krisztofer Horváth (Kecskeméti TE)
András Németh (Hamburger SV)
Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool)

“This time, we've called up 25 players to the squad and we'll be monitoring Roland Sallai’s condition day by day to see the progress of his recovery”, Marco Rossi told mlsz.hu. “Besides that, the training camp for our U21 national team will be taking place in the same period, so we'll have enough available players - despite having a lot of injured players, this is why we haven’t called up any new players. We can say about almost all our squads in recent years that we had several injured players, so we've already faced this problem numerous times; it's not a new thing for us. We've also always solved this problem in the past, so I'm sure we will solve it this time once again, even though we'll have two difficult matches. At the moment, Bulgaria are in a difficult situation due to the tensions between the supporters and the federation, in addition to which they have a new head coach. The arrival of a new coach always bring new impulses and although they don’t have the chance to qualify for Euro 2024 anymore, their national team will represent their country, so I'm sure they'll do their best to achieve the best possible result. They have some dangerous players, so we'll have to give our best to be successful. Our second opponent, Montenegro, is a great team and really hard to play against. They're fighters, they don’t give space to their opponents and their team is made up of fantastic footballers. I hope that we'll be able to play against them without anything at stake, but as I always say about friendly matches, there are really no friendly matches, because we always represent Hungary, so we always want to make all Hungarians happy and proud by earning a great result".

The members of the squad will meet on 13 November in Telki before travelling to Plovdiv on 15 November where the next day they will face Bulgaria at 1800 (CET). Then, on 19 November, Rossi's Hungary will play their last international match of the year against Montenegro in the Puskás Aréna.