The gala premiere for the film Bölöni – A Legend from Transylvania by co-directors Tamás Kollarik and Attila Szabó was held at the Uránia National Film Theatre in Budapest, Hungary on Monday, 3 November. The film will be released in theatres across the country on 6 November.
László Bölöni is one of the only two Hungarian players to win the European Cup (or its successor Champions League), the other one being—who else—Ferenc Puskás. Bölöni climbed to the top of European football with the Romanian club Steaua București in 1986. Ironically, his way to victory went through the Hungarian champions, Budapest Honvéd. The two teams clashed in the second round of the competition in the fall of 1985. Honvéd won the first leg 1–0 at home, but Steaua turned things around in Bucharest, winning 4–1.
What sets Bölöni apart from Puskás is that he never played for the Hungarian National Team—evidently, through no fault of his own. The ‘national-communist’ Ceaușescu regime at the time was very forceful in assimilating the ethnic Hungarians of Transylvania into the Romanian culture. Thus, Bölöni made 102 caps for the Romanian National Team.
He remains one of the few figures who is equally respected by Romanian and Hungarian sports fans—this is one of the major themes of the upcoming documentary about his life.
In the 1986 EC final, Steaua beat FC Barcelona on penalties. Bölöni missed his shot in the shootout. However, that did not matter: in one of the most memorable performances for any goalkeeper, Helmut Duckadam saved all four penalties by Barcelona players! The Romanian goalkeeping hero passed away in 2024, but he was alive during the filming of the documentary, so he too is featured in the film.
For many international football fans, Bölöni is remembered less for his playing career and more for his achievements as a coach. That is because in 2002, while coaching Sporting CP in Portugal, he was the one who promoted a teenage Cristiano Ronaldo to the senior team. By the end of the season, he was signed by Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, and the rest is history.
The gala premiere at Uránia was attended by a whole slew of illustrious guests, such as House Speaker László Kövér, Romanian Ambassador to Hungary Gabriel Șopandă, and, evidently, the man of the evening himself, László Bölöni.
‘I am a football coach, not a film critic, so I would not want to go into a professional analysis of the work. What I do know is that a lot of people have put a lot of work into the film: the directors, cameramen, editors, and the people who scored the music. Evidently, all this means something different to me than to a simple viewer, since every move, every hint, every sentence uttered elicits different emotions from me, the protagonist, than from someone else in the audience. Certainly, real happiness and sorrow are displayed at every moment,’ Bölöni told the audience on stage at the premiere, as quoted by the Hungarian sports daily Nemzeti Sport.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary has posted to his Facebook page about the documentary. ‘He is legendary even on the big screen,’ he wrote.
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