Szélesi's squad boosted by new faces ahead of Costa Rica test

Earlier, Roland Varga had become the fourth player to withdraw from the group due to injury and subsequent news that Roland Sallai has also left the national team training centre at Telki for fear of aggravating a strain ahead of his Cypriot club APOEL's next Champions' League match means these new faces have been most welcome.

"Unfortunately we are four players fewer than would be ideal and it's very important that we practise in training with the appropriate number of players and that players are ready to step in if someone drops out. I'd like to thank Újpest and Puskás Akadémia and also Videoton in particular for releasing József Varga on the same day as they played a match", Szélesi told mlsz.hu.

The national squad were involved in tailored exercises on Friday afternoon based on the recovery levels of each player following the previous evening's match against Luxembourg, but a full session took place that evening and the group has trained over the weekend too, including, of course, tactical work ahead of the match against Costa Rica.

One point of interest surrounding Hungary's last fixture of 2017 is that there will be nearly a full team of players available to participate in this fixture who took part in the FIFA Under 20 World Cup 3rd/4th place play-off between the same two nations. For Costa Rica, Kenner Gutiérrez, Marco Urena, David Guzmán, Cristian Gamboa, Bryan Oviedo and Danny Carvajal were in that squad eight years ago and in the full national squad now too, while for Hungary, current internationals Zsolt Korcsmár, Krisztián Németh, János Szabó and third-choice goalkeeper Ádám Kovácsik were present back then in Egypt too. Due to an injury sustained last Friday, another alumnus of that bronze-medal-winning team, Roland Varga will be mmissing for Szélesi's team on Tuesday while other players we could have hoped to have played here too include goalkeepers Péter Gulácsi and Balázs Megyeri, so it's clearly that the age group of players born in 1989–1990 was a successful one for both nations.