On the face of it there was nothing unusual when, in October 2018, Viktor Orban attended the opening ceremony of a rural town’s new football academy. Hungary’s prime minister has long pumped vast amounts of money into his favourite sport, modernising its infrastructure while other elements of the government’s activity regress deeper into authoritarianism, and he was present to see the fruits of another new project. Orban watched a tournament between under-14 teams at the €9.5m facility, staying long enough to hand the winners their trophy.
The twist: Orban was in a different country. He was visiting Backa Topola, a small town in northern Serbia nearly 30 miles from the border with Hungary, to show his backing for its local side TSC. The surrounding region, Vojvodina, contains nearly 185,000 ethnic Hungarians and many are eligible to apply for citizenship, voting in the country’s elections. At the last count they made up 58% of the club’s surrounding municipality.
