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Szabi Schön is loving life in the fast lane with Wanderers… at least now he has got used to driving on the other side of the road.
The Hungarian summer signing has made a bright start for his new club in League One, quickly developing a taste for Lancastrian cooking and the local dialect.
But mastering the motorways has proven the biggest challenge for the 23-year-old, who now has to think twice every time he gets behind the wheel.
“I find it so difficult to drive here,” he told The Bolton News. “The English people drive to the left and in my country we’re driving to the right, so it has been very hard for me.
“With everything else, I am comfortable. The club has been really good, the chefs are great inside the club and make good food, so I am really happy here.”
As Schön sat to talk with the local media, his girlfriend Eufrozina – or Frozi, for short - was on a plane destined for Manchester from Budapest.
The young midfielder is looking forward to putting down some solid roots in the area, having spent the last few weeks getting to know his new club and living in the Whites Hotel.
“I am looking for a house and it might happen in the next two or three days, so I am really excited about that,” he said. “I have been here alone, but my girlfriend is arriving in two or three hours, so I can’t wait to see her – I haven’t seen her a long time!”
Schön already has experience of living abroad, spending 18 months in MLS with FC Dallas, and though his time in the US did not go exactly according to plan on the pitch he has no regrets about making the move at an early age.
“It was a good time but the football is different, maybe not a different level but a different style. Football isn’t the first sport there,” he said.
“I was there for nearly one-and-a-half years so I had some good memories.
“I had a change of culture and language from Hungary and that has helped me to move here.”
Usually referred to by his surname back home, Szabolcs has quickly been contracted to ‘Szabi’ or ‘Szabs’ on the Lostock training ground. A month into his first spell in English football he is starting to feel at home, albeit on the pitch the 5ft 7ins wing-back is still finding his way in a new position.
“I was a winger before but a year ago I became a left wing-back because my old coach changed formation,” he said. “I think it fits for me in this position because I can also attack most of the time.
“I am learning. It is more difficult to play here as a wing-back because the opponents know that I am not so tall, so they recognise right away if they are losing they have to put a long ball to my side and maybe to win it. But I am young, I will get there. I am small but I will fight.”
Though Schön’s immediate aim is to help Wanderers push for automatic promotion from League One this season, he hopes that can go hand-in-hand with a recall to the national team he has already represented eight times.
Hungary have been drawn in a fearsome Nations League group alongside Germany, the Netherlands and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and begin their fixtures on September 7.
In the longer term, Schön is eyeing up a return to North America, only this time to play for his country at the World Cup finals – a competition for which they have not qualified since 1986.
“One of the main reasons to move here was to help the team but also to get back into the national team,” he said. “This is really important to me.
“Against the big teams my country always does well. In the last Euros we had Portugal, France and Germany then in the Nations League last year we did a really good job.
“Maybe for us it is a better fit to play better teams. We are getting to tournaments now, we have qualified for the Euros the last few times, but we want to get back into the World Cup because that has not happened for a really long time.”
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