Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai finds some familiar faces in Philadelphia

For Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai, Wednesday’s preseason game against fellow English power Arsenal at a sold-out Lincoln Financial Field (7:30 p.m., ESPN, ESPN+) won’t just be another stop on a U.S. tour.

The dynamic playmaker has two good friends in town, and they’ve known about his rise in the world’s game for a while. Union playmaker Dániel Gazdag is a colleague on Hungary’s national team, and Union sporting director Ernst Tanner helped launch Szoboszlai’s pro career.

“He is the No. 1 star in Hungary,” said Gazdag, who will be at the Linc on Wednesday and has plans to see his friend. “Playing for a club like Liverpool, it’s amazing. Especially for a country like Hungary, it’s a small country.”

Those plans probably will just be a quick hello, not a trip around town. Security concerns always matter when soccer superstars travel around the world, and a cheesesteak before game day wouldn’t be the healthiest idea.

“They’re on a strict diet and a little bit stricter training camp — they can’t really go out,” Gazdag said. “But he’s a normal guy, a regular guy. If he could do it, he would, for sure.”

Gazdag’s pride in his friend is national and personal. He has played with Szoboszlai for six years, including at this summer’s European Championship. They’d also have been teammates at the 2021 tournament had Gazdag not suffered an injury in training camp.

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“We didn’t really have players in clubs like Liverpool in the last 50, 60 years,” Gazdag said. “It’s just amazing, and everyone is proud of him.”

That isn’t much of an overstatement. Hungary was a world power in the 1940s and ‘50s, reaching the 1954 World Cup final with a squad led by Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis, and Nándor Hidegkuti. Those names still resonate today, especially Puskás — a Real Madrid legend whose name is on FIFA’s global goal of the year award.

But Hungary didn’t qualify for the European Championships between 1972 and 2016, and hasn’t played at a World Cup since 1986. The World Cup drought could end in 2026 since the tournament is expanding to 48 teams, just as the expansion of the Euros helped end that drought. We won’t know for a while, though, because Europe’s qualifying tournament doesn’t start until March.

If there’s another Szoboszlai out there — or another Gazdag — Tanner would know how to find him. He was in charge of the youth setup at Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg when a club scout saw Szoboszlai play in a youth tournament near the Austro-Hungarian border. Then Tanner watched tape of Szoboszlai with a youth team of his Hungarian hometown club, Főnix Gold FC, and arranged a trial in Salzburg.

“When we saw him in our environment, he was just incredible,” Tanner told The Inquirer in an interview this week. “Not coming from a big academy, but from a local club, and with all these abilities technically. And he was physically not even close to [being] developed.”

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It didn’t take long for other clubs to start paying attention — including Arsenal, coincidentally. The north London club kept its interest for a long time, too, though it ultimately went in other directions.

Tanner and Salzburg convinced Szoboszlai and his family to start his pro career in Salzburg instead. The club had a clear development pathway for him, a willingness to play him more than Arsenal would, and closer proximity to home and family.

Szoboszlai spent three years at Salzburg, then two at bigger-sibling German club RB Leipzig after a $27.5 million transfer. Coincidentally, his successor at Salzburg was another Tanner protégé, former Union midfielder Brenden Aaronson. (Tanner called that “the fun part of the story.”)

Over those five years in the Red Bull system, Szoboszlai became an archetype of what an attacking midfielder should be in Tanner’s high-pressing system. It isn’t an easy job, because you have to blend skill on the ball, passing, shooting, and a lot of defensive hustle — as Gazdag and Aaronson have shown Union fans over the years.

“With the ball, no question, [Szoboszlai] was technically excellent. He had all the tools,” Tanner said. “But against the ball, there was just the natural instinct of him that he wanted to have the ball when he did not have it.”

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Pressing isn’t just chasing after an opponent, after all. It’s a collective pursuit, and each player has to know which opposing players and parts of the field to focus on.

“It took us a lot of conviction from the player in order to buy into that model and that probably made him the great player he is right now,” Tanner said.

It also earned Szoboszlai a history-making $77 million move to Liverpool last summer to play for another of Gegenpressing’s great teachers: manager Jürgen Klopp. The famed German stepped down from the job in the spring, and now Dutch coach Arne Slot is at the helm.

A new boss likely will mean some tactical changes, but Szoboszlai is expected to remain a key attacking piece for the Reds. That was shown in a preseason exhibition last Friday, a 1-0 win over Spain’s Real Betis in Pittsburgh where Szoboszlai scored the goal.

After Liverpool held an open practice at the Linc on Sunday, Szoboszlai told The Inquirer that he hasn’t talked with Tanner in a while, but hasn’t forgotten his influence.

“He was the one who started everything,” Szoboszlai said, “so I’m still thankful for everything and will hopefully see him soon.”

Tanner appreciated the kind words, as he has from many of his former players over the years.

“It’s nice, and it’s a good confirmation for what we did,” he said. “That shows that the boys were grounded, and we dealt with really good people when they remember their mentors. You don’t find it that often anymore in nowadays’ world, but it means something to you.”

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