Sándor Preisinger announces men's U18 squad for Václav Ježek tournament

The Hungary Under-17 team which qualified for the World Cup in Brazil this autumn courtesy of their exploits at the UEFA European Under-17 Championship in Ireland in the spring, has, due to the summer age-group switchover, now become the Under-18s and will play their first matches next week in the Czech Republic under their new guise.

Head coach Sándor Preisinger has announced his squad for the Václav Ježek Memorial Tournament – in honour of the former Sparta Prague and Feyenoord coach who led Czechoslovakia to European Championship glory in 1976 – with sixteen of the squad from Ireland being called up. Many of those invited have changed clubs during the summer, Márk Kosznovszky and Botond Balogh joining Parma from MTK and Rajmund Molnár joining Benfica from Honvéd.

“Our prime objective in the five warmup matches we have until the World Cup, including the ones in the Czech Republic, is to get an overview of the current condition of those players who might make the squad, and for the players to compete for a place on the plane to Brazil, given that we’ll be compiling the squad based on their performances in these matches. There are a few players who have minor knocks and therefore won’t be available for the Ježek tournament, but they’ll get an opportunity to show what they can do later”, said Sándor Preisinger after announcing his squad.

Preisinger continued by saying that his staff are already preparing for World Cup group opponents Nigeria, Ecuador and Australia and video footage of all three teams’ qualification matches have been received.

“Already from this footage is can be seen that all three will be exceedingly strong opponents. I’d expect the matches to be very even; all three opponents have their own strengths and it’s impossible to say how the group will pan out”, he added.

The Václav Ježek tournament will see the Hungary Under-18 team take on the Czech Republic on 20th August, Latvia on 21st and then a final match against one of Slovakia, North Macedonia or Ukraine on 24th August.

Hungary Under-18 squad

Goalkeepers:

Krisztián Hegyi (West Ham), Gábor Megyeri (Honvéd-MFA)

Defenders: Gábor Buna (Honvéd-MFA), Zoltán Dávid (Békéscsaba), Botond Balogh (Parma), Dávid László (Honvéd-MFA), Donát Orosz (DVTK), Alex Szabó (Honvéd-MFA), Patrick Iyinbor (Ferencváros), Zétény Hosszú (Puskás Akadémia)

Midfielders:

Mihály Kata (MTK Budapest), Gergő Ominger (Puskás Akadémia), Patrik Posztobányi (Puskás Akadémia), Sámuel Major (Salzburg), Márk Kosznovszky (Parma), Dominik Kovács (Honvéd-MFA)

Forwards:

György Komáromi (Puskás Akadémia), Ákos Zuigeber (MTK Budapest), Rajmund Molnár (Benfica), Roland Hajdú (Ferencváros), András Németh (Genk), Balázs Kesző Farkas (Győri ETO)