Hungarian men’s national hockey team player calls his own coach a ‘clown’

Vilmos Galló, a 27-year-old forward with Hugary’s men’s national hockey team, was quite blunt when discussing his team’s surprising 2-1 loss to Romania at the Division IA Men’s World Championship earlier this week.

Hungary was one of the favorites to win gold, and ultimately did earn promotion along with Slovenia to the top division of the 2025 World Championship. But the loss to Romania meant having a tougher road to the finish line, and when talking to the media after the game, on Wednesday, Galló made his opinion quite clear about bench boss Don MacAdam.

“Unfortunately, the Head Coach is a clown; I can’t do anything about that,” Galló said in an interview translated by Reddit user DatOgreSpammer. “I pour my heart out during the games, but he’s trying to push me lower and lower every single match. I’m trying to get over it, show up on the ice, but I couldn’t make him like me.

“He decided to pull me from the PP, which frustrated me,” he continued. “We’ll see what happens. Unfortunately, we lost, but in my opinion, we’ve had plenty of chances, should’ve scored a couple. It was a rather frustrating match, rather sad, but that’s hockey sometimes.”

Galló played 17:46 in that game, the most ice time he had all tournament long. He played just 14:21 against Italy and 11:48 against Slovenia, a game Hungary needed to win to help them advance. He finished with just one assist in the opening game against Japan, but was one of Hungary’s top players at the Olympic qualification tournament earlier this year.

Galló, who is nicknamed the “Hungarian Hurricane”, later apologized on Facebook, saying (in a translation via Google), “we should have fixed the problems in the dressing room.”

MacAdam previously served as an assistant coach with Detroit Red Wings, but have spent the past few years working in various areas of Hungary’s men’s hockey programs, including at the junior levels.