Screw Kerkez's roadside-working mother — go, Ukraine, on Monday!

Milos Kerkez and his father also ended up on the Myrotvorets database, which collects Ukraine's "enemies" and lists them as provocateurs accused of supporting Russian aggression. The listing itself is up to the website's editors, but the story that led to it wasn't invented by the database's editors: the Hungarian national team player supplied the footage on the pitch, and his father added the Russian musical backing. They certainly worked hard for the outrage — we have to give them that — just as our reader's letter telling the Hungarian ultras to go fuck their mothers has received another, painfully accurate confirmation.

The story began at Puskás Arena, where part of the crowd booed the Ukrainian national anthem.

At the end of the match, tempers flared on the pitch as well. Viktor Szoboszlai clashed with Tsyhankov, and Kerkez joined the brawl, grabbing and yanking at the Ukrainian player's jersey. His father posted a picture of the incident in an Instagram story, set to AK-47 and Noggano's track "Russian Paradise." The name AK-47 is a particularly tasteful choice for this bit of family pride: a performer named after a firearm provides the soundtrack to the son roughing up a player from a country that the Russian army attacks every single day. What turns the stomach about the father's Putin-fellating gesture is that for Ukrainians, "Russian paradise" means shelled homes, murdered family members, occupation and mass graves. Celebrating footage of manhandling a Ukrainian player with this track is a vile provocation, one with very real dead people as its backdrop; anyone who finds it funny is simply lacking the humanity that should underpin a sense of humor, and anyone who tries to pass it off as sporting passion is using football to cover up their own moral squalor.

Meanwhile, the football isn't going well either: in the first two rounds of the Nations League they managed zero goals scored and zero wins — the home defeat to Ukraine was followed by a goalless draw in Belfast — yet the big mouth, the jersey-yanking and the family's "Russian paradise" are all present and accounted for, as if there's no energy left for scoring, only for kicking people who, because of the war, can't even play their home match on home soil.

That's why on Monday, at the Ukraine–Hungary match in Trnava on October 5, I'll be cheering for Ukraine, and I'd like every decent Hungarian fan to think about doing the same. Kerkez, the big-mouthed, man-bun-wearing Szoboszlai, and this whole self-satisfied football world built up around them need a defeat big enough that even the stands can feel something of it. A slap in the face on the pitch might finally break through that comfortable certainty that any disgusting behavior gets a national pardon as long as it's done in the national jersey — because what you did disgraces Hungarians, and as a Hungarian I'm under no obligation to applaud that. Kerkez, Szoboszlai, the mob that booed the Ukrainian anthem, and the father celebrating with "Russian Paradise": go fuck your whore mothers; let the Ukrainians settle the rest on the pitch on Monday. Go, Ukraine!

Ugar