Goalkeeper Péter Gulácsi, who currently plays for the German Bundesliga club RB Leipzig, has announced he will no longer be appearing in the Hungarian National Team. He is 35 years old, so it is not an unusual decision for a player to voluntarily relieve himself from international duties at that age.
Gulácsi has already done so for the last four games of the last UEFA Nations League season in the fall. At the time, he had just returned after nearly a year of hiatus due to a torn ACL and a subsequent infection that prolonged the recovery time. While he was in the squad for the Nations League play-off against Türkiye in March, he did not get any playtime. Instead, head coach Marco Rossi opted for Ferencváros goalie Dénes Dibusz.
In his farewell video, Gulácsi told Hungarian football fans? ‘it was a great privilege and honour to represent my country at the highest level in the past eleven years’; and thanked all the National Team head coaches who had selected him for the team over the years, as well as his fellow teammates, the supporters, and his family for the love and support he had received.
Even before making his senior team debut, Gulácsi made his mark on Hungarian football. He was in goal for the U20 National Team that won the bronze medal in the U20 World Championship in Egypt in 2009.
In 2014 he made his first appearance in the senior Hungarian team in a friendly game against Denmark. He has played 58 games for Hungary in total. Also, he is one of the few players who were in the squad for all three consecutive European Championships Hungary qualified for between 2016 and 2024. However, he did not make any appearances at Euro 2016, where he was selected as the third-choice keeper behind Gábor Király and Dénes Dibusz. He was consistently in goal for Hungary at Euro 2020 (played in 2021 due to the pandemic) and Euro 2024, however.
Gulácsi is the third most capped goalkeeper in Hungarian football history with his 58 marches, behind the aforementioned Király (108) and Gyula Grosics (86), the keeper for Puskás’ Magic Magyars generation.
As for Gulácsi’s club career, he was trained at Liverpool’s academy, but never made it to the goal of their senior team, only the bench. In 2013 he got signed by the Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg, with whom he won two Austrian Bundesliga titles as the first-choice keeper before transferring to RB Leipzig, also owned by the energy drink giant, who were playing in 2. Bundesliga in Germany at the time in 2015. They got promoted to the first division at the end of the season.
Gulácsi has stayed in Leipzig ever since. He has made 246 appearances in the German Bundesliga and 41 appearances in the UEFA Champions League for them so far. He also won the German Cup twice, in 2021 and 2022.
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