Marco Rossi moved quickly to dismiss reports of a falling-out with Liverpool manager Arne Slot, calling the idea implausible and urging respect for the national team after Hungary\u2019s friendly schedule.<\/p>\n
“If we had to save his energy, whether it was for him or anyone else, he could do it,” Rossi sniffed ahead of Hungary\u2019s friendly against Slovenia. “However, for us, the national team is the priority, now it is to play good games.”<\/p>\n
Dominik Szoboszlai and his Liverpool colleague Milos Kerkez both started Hungary\u2019s 1\u20130 win in Budapest on Saturday. Rossi was at pains to explain his substitutions and to push back against suggestions of tension with Slot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve read nonsense in the press,\u201d the Hungary boss fumed. \u201cYou can\u2019t imagine that I would be so arrogant, conceited and stupid as to compare myself to a coach who manages a team in the Premier League .<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not comparable to the Liverpool manager, I had no intention of that happening at all. Arne Slot said he hoped his players wouldn\u2019t play two games. I saved Dominik Szoboszlai 10 minutes and Milos Kerkez 20.<\/p>\n
\u201cSlot is a coach of a top club. He deserves maximum respect. I am nobody. But since I am the head coach of the Hungarian national team, I think the Hungarian national team also deserves respect, at least because of its past.<\/p>\n
The article\u2019s match details list minutes played by several internationals, correct as of March 30, 2026: Giorgi Mamardashvili 180, Dominik Szoboszlai 87, Milos Kerkez 76, Jeremie Frimpong 0, Virgil van Dijk 90, Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 90, Andy Robertson 71, Alexis Mac Allister 76, Ryan Gravenberch 82, Florian Wirtz 90, Cody Gakpo 82 and Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 93.<\/p>\n
Slot\u2019s wider concerns over his international contingent extend to other players who have travelled and logged minutes in recent friendlies. The French pair Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 and Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 started one of France\u2019s March friendlies before travelling to the U.S. for matches against Brazil and Colombia. Alexis Mac Allister undertook a near 14,000-mile round trip to Buenos Aires, a journey Rossi suggested can complicate player recovery and form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rossi dismisses feud as ‘nonsense’, defends Hungary priority and explains saving minutes. Szoboszlai<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961,175],"tags":[1023,299,1305],"class_list":["post-10219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-liverpool","tag-alexis-mac-allister","tag-arne-slot","tag-bench-selection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}