The Chicago Fire soccer team announced their acquisition of 28-year-old Hungarian international striker Nemanja Nikolic from the Polish club, Legia Warsaw. Nikolic is a super hot player. Chicago Fire beat out English Premier League club, Hull City, and several Chinese Super League teams to sign him.
Nemanja Nikolic, a Hungarian soccer player? The 29 year-old has an interesting story.
Nemanja Nikolic. PHOTO PRZEMYSLAW SZYSZKA / SE / EAST NEWS POZNAN
He was born in Serbia (actually in Yugoslavia in 1987) in the city of Senta (Zenta in Hungarian). The city was illegally occupied by pro-Hitler dictator Miklós Horthy in 1941 and annexed to Hungary. Just a year before Count Pál Teleki, Hungary’s Prime Minister, negotiated a treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia. Teleki was so distressed by the cowardice of Horthy and his pro-Hitler cronies that he committed suicide.
Hungary used the occupation to alienate the mixed population of the area. Thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews and other “undesirables” were murdered by Horthy’s henchman. The brutality of the mass murders shocked the world and it foreshadowed things to come in Hungary: mass murders of Jews and Gypsies. In 1944 Tito’s partisans took revenge and many ethnic Hungarians of this area fell victim of the reprisal. It took decades to heal the ethnic rift in Senta.
Nemanja Nicolic’s father is an ethnic Serb while his mother is Hungarian. In 2008 Nikolić moved from Serbia to Hungary and signed with Kaposvár. Two years later he moved to Videoton where he became the top scorer and his team won the Hungarian League.
In 2015 he joined Legia, the Polish premier team based in Warsaw. There he scored 41 goals in 58 matches helping the club to the 2015-16 Polish top title. He also won the golden boot and player of the year honors.
Chicago Fire recently hired super-talented – also Yugoslavia-born – coach Veljko Paunović, who wanted to bring in fresh talent. Nemanja Nikolic got the call and signed with the Chicago team.
Chicago Fire coach Veljko Paunovic.
Nemanja, welcome to the United States! We wish you lots of success. I encourage my fellow Hungarian-Americans to keep an eye on this young man; he is a remarkable player.
György Lázár
Mixing Sport with politics. What does Nemanja Nikolics got to do with Horthy again or Teleki or Orban or Trianon? Do yourself a favour, go and spend your time with a women. Its much better you for than your 4 eyed retarded Hungarian-bashing comment.
Mr. Kalasz Musztafa is 100% on the mark with his comment that György Lázár mixes sports with Hungarian-bashing. This mixture is poisonous for at least two reasons: First, because the two have little in common and second, that by covering a sports event Lázár hits the unsuspecting reader with historical distortions about Hungary. He claims Miklós Horthy was a “Pro-Hitler dictator.” This oversimplified distortion has been repeated by Lázár a number of times in some of his past writings. Objective, non-Hungarian historians and writers (C.A. Macartney, Thomas Sakmyster, Bryan Cartledge, J.F. Montgomery) have already debunked this myth of communist historiography. The Novi Sad atrocity is also presented as Horthy’s responsibility, when in fact it was the work of a number of demented rebel officers who retaliated for Partisan sniper attacks and sabotage. They were responsible for the execution of 3309 people, mostly Serb supporters of the Partizans but also about 400 Hungarian Jews who had been accused of supporting the communist resistance. These officers were then tried for their brutality and the five most responsible (Feketehalmy-Czeydner Ferenc, Grassy József and three others) were given death sentences by the Hungarian military tribunal in December, 1943. However, German SS units helped them to escape to the Third Reich, where they joined the SS and came back to Hungary as part of the German occupation force in the spring of 1944. Let the facts speak for themselves!