Loic Nego. (AFP/LIONEL BONAVENTURE)
F
or French-born Hungary midfielder Loic Nego, stepping out at Euro 2020 to play against Les Bleus in Budapest on Saturday will be a "special" moment to savour.
France "will always be the country where I was born, where I grew up, so it's a bit special", Nego, 30, told AFP in an interview last month.
But now Nego's heart beats for Hungary, his adopted country that offered him a place in its national team seven years after he arrived in the country in 2013 aged 22.
He made his major tournament debut as a 65th-minute substitute in the 3-0 loss to Portugal on Tuesday.
At Hungary's pre-tournament alpine training camp near Salzburg in neighbouring Austria, the player looked at ease with his teammates.
Acquiring Hungarian citizenship via naturalisation in 2019, he was called up last year by Hungary's Italian coach Marco Rossi, just in time for a push for Euro 2020 qualification.
"(Rossi) gave me this chance and I am very grateful for it," said the softly-spoken Nego who plays for MOL Fehervar (formerly known as Videoton), southwest of Budapest.
Nego swiftly rewarded Rossi for his faith with a memorable intervention that paved Hungary's path to the delayed Euro 2020 tournament that began Friday.
In the play-off final against Iceland last November, his 88th-minute equaliser four minutes after coming on as a substitute hauled the Magyars back from the brink of defeat.
"Bravo my Loic! Lajos!" screamed the television commentator, using his name in Hungarian, after Nego turned in a loose ball in the goalmouth, his first international goal.
Before running on that night at the Puskas Arena in Budapest, one of 11 host cities at Euro 2020, Nego knew that France were waiting for the winners in Group F.
"It was in my mind that I would be able to see old teammates, Antoine (Griezmann), Wissam Ben Yedder who I grew up with in the same neighbourhood (in Garges-les-Gonesse in the Paris region). It will be a pleasure to see them again," he smiled.
Nego played alongside Griezmann for France when they won the U-19 European Championships in 2010, but since then the pair's career paths have diverged dramatically.
Griezmann became a world star for Barcelona and France, while Nego's career took him from Nantes to Roma, then after spells at Standard Liege and Charlton, to Hungary.
Despite Prime Minister Viktor Orban's hardline anti-immigration policies, Nego enthuses about "beautiful" Budapest where he lives with his wife and two children, even if the Magyar language is "a little complicated".
"I don't regret at all the decision to switch, now it is only about Hungary," he said, adding that although he did not particularly support Les Bleus at the 2018 World Cup, he "still smiled" when they won.
"I knew that my chances of playing for France were close to zero, so I jumped at the chance that was given me," he said.
And if Hungarian football has descended from the heights of the "Magical Magyars" era of the 1950s, Nego senses a budding revival, in part thanks to Orban's lavish funding of a nationwide stadia-building programme.
"There have been big developments" compared to 2013, when Nego arrived in this 9.8-million-strong central European country to play for Budapest club Ujpest, he said.
But with Hungary facing formidable opponents in Group F, with Germany on June 23 also still to come, their hopes of success at Euro 2020 look slim.
Their young star, RB Leipzig's Dominik Szoboszlai, 20, who scored the winner against Iceland, is also out through injury.
"One piece of luck is that we will play in front of our own fans," he said, with the Puskas Arena the only tournament venue without a fan capacity limit as a health precaution.
"We'll go all out, and see what happens," he said.