France fans miss Euro 2020 match vs. Hungary in Budapest by travelling to Bucharest by mistake
A group of France fans managed to miss their team’s Euro 2020 game against Hungary at the weekend after not only traveling to the wrong stadium but the wrong country completely.
Les Bleus were playing in the Hungarian capital of Budapest last Saturday afternoon but, according to Romanian newspaper Jurnalul National, the six hapless work colleagues boarded a flight that morning that landed more than 500 miles away in the Romanian capital of Bucharest.
Budapest. Bucharest. You can see where the confusion lies.
According to Jurnalul National, the supporters only realized their mistake once they’d arrived in Bucharest just hours before kickoff. They had been drinking in the city with some Ukraine fans they had met at the airport — where neither the Romanian flags nor the language spoken by the officials at the airport made them realize that they had landed in the wrong place — and traveled into the center of town with them on the bus.
The Ukrainians were in Bucharest quite correctly, ahead of their country’s final Group C game against Austria at the Arena Nationala, which was to be played on Monday evening.
“We thought they were Hungarian fans going to the game and we followed them, thinking that as they were from the city they knew the way to the stadium,” one of the France fans told Jurnalul National.
During the course of their revelry, it dawned on the French fans that they were in fact a long way away from the Puskas Arena in Hungary, with no chance of getting there in time to watch the world champions in action. Asked if they had traveled from Kiev by Romanian journalist Adi Munteanu, who noticed them not joining in the chanting with the Ukraine fans, the misplaced French supporters replied: “We got here by mistake. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are not where we need to be.”
Once reality had dawned, the France supporters decided to stay put, book some emergency accommodation online, and watch the match on television, witnessing the 1-1 draw from a much further distance than they’d hoped.
The group decided to remain in the Romanian capital and again watch from there as their heroes play at the Puskas Arena in Wednesday’s Group F decider against Portugal. Should France win that game and therefore finish top of their group, they will play their round-of-16 game on June 28 in — you guessed it — Bucharest. Should that happen, the hapless group will try to get tickets for that match.
“We have to learn more about Europe,” one of the group acknowledged. No kidding.
Source: ESPN
