Hungary's 3-1 Win Overshadowed by Terrifying Camera Crash
For a few chilling seconds in Debrecen, football didn’t matter.
Hungary’s 3-1 friendly win over Kazakhstan at the Nagyerdei Stadion on Tuesday will be remembered less for Dominik Szoboszlai’s influence and more for a stadium malfunction that could easily have ended in tragedy.
Camera falls from 20 metres
Midway through the first half, a TV camera suspended high from the stadium roof began to smoke. Hungarian media, cited by the BBC, reported that a fire had damaged the cable holding the device some 20 metres above the pitch.
In the 26th minute, the inevitable happened. The heavy camera tore free and plummeted to the turf, smashing into the pitch just a couple of metres from a pitchside cameraman. Metal and plastic scattered. Players and staff immediately turned in shock.
Somehow, miraculously, nobody was hurt.
The referee halted play while officials cleared the wreckage and checked the area. Once the debris was removed and the situation deemed safe, the match resumed, but the sense of how close the game had come to disaster lingered.
Szoboszlai takes control
Before the chaos, Kazakhstan had stunned the home crowd with an early strike, taking the lead in the ninth minute and briefly silencing Debrecen.
Hungary needed their captain. Szoboszlai delivered.
The Liverpool midfielder, wearing the armband and dictating play, dragged his side back into the contest after the break. Early in the second half he struck the equaliser, the moment that shifted the tone of the night away from shock and back towards football.
The pressure told again. Szoboszlai then turned provider, threading the assist for Andras Schäfer to fire Hungary in front and tilt the game decisively towards the hosts. From a goal down and rattled, Marco Rossi’s side suddenly looked in control, their captain at the heart of it.
Deep into injury-time, Bournemouth’s Alex Tóth added a third to seal a 3-1 victory, a scoreline that reflected Hungary’s dominance once they had settled.
Liverpool’s Pecsi makes senior bow
Szoboszlai was not the only Liverpool player on show. The night also marked a personal milestone for Armin Pecsi.
The 21-year-old goalkeeper, who joined Liverpool last summer and is still waiting for his first-team debut at Anfield, came on just after the hour mark to make his senior international bow for Hungary. Previously close to unexpected Premier League action when Freedie Woodman required lengthy treatment against Crystal Palace on April 25, Pecsi finally tasted top-level minutes on the international stage instead.
He replaced the starting keeper for the final half-hour and saw out the closing stages without major alarm, watching from the back as Hungary pushed on to complete the comeback and then add gloss in stoppage time.
Milos Kerkez, another name familiar to Premier League followers, was in the squad but did not feature against Kazakhstan.
Hungary, Szoboszlai, Pecsi and Kerkez will not be part of this month’s FIFA World Cup, their failure to qualify already confirmed. On this evidence, though, the spine of their next campaign is already taking shape — and on a night when a freak accident nearly stole everything, that progress felt even more precious.
