The Italian manager said on Saturday on the M4 Sport channel that since September 2020 he has achieved incredible and fantastic results that will remain forever in the history book of Hungarian football. The fans will always remember them, but now we have to focus on the future, he said.
Rossi recalled that they faced Albania twice last year and lost both times, the main reason why they could only watch the World Cup in Qatar on television. He added that they were at the European Championship, and the memory of that is really nice, even if the glass might seem half empty, given that there were six minutes left before moving on to the group stage. The situation was similar this year in the Nations League, as they could have fought for a place in the final four with a tie in the last round, which they ultimately lost.
As they say in Italy: we went to Rome, but we didn’t see the Pope. It means that we were close to a goal, but for some reason we didn’t reach it. Now is the time to achieve these goals. The first of these, and the most important at the moment, is to fight for direct qualification to the next European Championship
he has declared.
On 27 March, the Hungarians will host Bulgaria in the first round of qualifying for the 2024 continental tournament in Germany, and then meet Montenegro, Serbia and Lithuania.
The top two from each of the ten qualifying rounds advance to the 24-team tournament. 12 internationals can fight for the remaining three places in the supplementary qualifiers scheduled for March 2024, where – thanks to their eighth place in the League of Nations – the Hungarian team could almost certainly figure, should they fail in the traditional qualifiers.
Teams in Divisions A, B and C “in need of supplemental examination” have four places each. This means that, in the event of an unsuccessful qualifying series, the Hungarians cannot improve the additional qualifications only if at least four of the seven teams that preceded them in the League of Nations do not reach the top two places in their qualifying group.
We know it won’t be easy, because we have to play several away games on difficult pitches, for example against Bulgaria or Montenegro. It will be a difficult task, but we have to be ready and we want to be ready
explained the captain.
Rossi said that as they begin their European Championship qualifiers and upcoming World Cup qualifiers, they should remember what they saw watching the World Cup, who and why qualified over them, what they were better at and what they can learn from.
“We have to learn from our mistakes, because if we don’t, we’ll only get older, but we won’t be any wiser,” thought the Italian coach.
