The Champions League final just took place in Budapest and PSG beat Arsenal on penalties at Puskás Aréna, denying the Gunners their first European title and retaining the trophy they won last year.
For a week, the Hungarian capital was the centre of the football world: fan events, legends appearances, content creators from every corner of the internet all descending on the city for the biggest game of the season.
For Dominik Szoboszlai, Hungary’s captain and one of the most recognisable footballers in the country, it should have been the proudest week of his career with his city & his people, greeting the sport he plays at the highest level.
Except, he watched it all as a spectator and that is entirely Liverpool’s doing.
While the defending Premier League champions finished fifth this season with just 60 points and 12 league defeats, they were also knocked out of the FA Cup 4-0 by Manchester City and beaten across both legs by PSG, the very team that just won the Champions League, in the quarter-finals.
At one point in November, they even lost nine of 12 games, the club’s worst run since 1953. Arne Slot, the coach, who had been celebrated as a tactical mastermind just a season earlier, spent the remainder of the campaign deflecting sack speculation.
Off the pitch it was worse. Mohamed Salah, Liverpool’s all-time top scorer in the Premier League and arguably the most important player in the club’s modern history, left at the end of the season after a public falling-out with Slot over tactics and his role in the team.
Andy Robertson, the left back who had been at the club since 2017 and captained Scotland for years, also departed. Two of the most significant figures of the Klopp era, gone in the same summer.
It was against this backdrop that AFTV, the largest Arsenal fan channel in the world, posted a photo of their founder Robbie Lyle alongside Szoboszlai at the Champions Festival, captioned simply “Hungarian royalty.” which racked up 849,000 views.
The reaction across football Twitter was immediate and the replies were full of Liverpool fans being angry, with comments even treating the photo as some kind of betrayal, while others framing it as a bad omen.
Some brought up the moment at the Etihad in April, when Szoboszlai confronted Liverpool supporters in the away end after the 4-0 FA Cup defeat, arms out, demanding appreciation, and pointed out the apparent contradiction of that same player now smiling for a photo in Arsenal territory. The suggestion, stated or implied, was that something was off about it.
It is worth being clear about what the photo actually was. Szoboszlai is Hungarian, Budapest was his city this week, and Robbie Lyle runs the biggest football fan network in the world and two people just happened to crossed paths at a public event. There was no statement being made, no loyalty being questioned. But that is not how tribal football Twitter operates.
Genuinely can’t wait until this guy pisses off https://t.co/jUu6XuUNrS
— ! (@Kashe1dz) May 29, 2026
Please sell him https://t.co/mhiTlHt2ib
— Zak (@ZakLFC7) May 29, 2026
The perceived friendliness between a Liverpool player and an Arsenal-affiliated figure became a referendum on commitment and identity, and a section of the fanbase, already raw after one of the worst seasons in recent memory, a photo of their best player laughing with Arsenal’s most recognisable face in Budapest was simply the final twist of the knife.
Although the real question about Szoboslai’ presence there has nothing to do with AFTV. He is 25, valued at €85 million, and just watched the Champions League final in his own countryfrom the outside. What’s left now is a quiet resignation, and for Szoboszlai specifically, real questions about whether next season at Liverpool is where his career needs to be.
