The first league championship in Hungary was contested in 1901 though only a handful of clubs participated.
Among them were Ferencvaros and MTK Budapest – winners in 1903 and 1904 respectively – and this is telling because these two clubs would go on to dominate the Hungarian footballing landscape throughout the 20th century and right up to the present.
Here they were, marking their territory right from the off.
A mere matter of years later, Ujpest joined them among the elite, and then later still Budapest Honved and a history of Hungarian football essentially revolves around this quartet of clubs, until modern times at least.
Indeed, it is highly pertinent that all four reside in the country’s capital, a fact that says a lot about Hungary because it is in Budapest where all of the power lies. Along with the money and the prestige.
Biggest Clubs In Hungarian Football:
- Ferencvaros
- MTK Budapest
- Ujpest
- Debreceni VSC
- Budapest Honved
Clearly this is not a nation that places a lot of stock in ‘levelling up’.
But we’re not here to bemoan the societal problems of a central European republic. We’re here to celebrate five of its biggest clubs, clubs that have given the world fabulous sides illuminated by fabulous players.
5) Budapest Honved
In 2017, Honved secured their 14th Nemzeti Bajnoksag title. Four years later they left their home of 105 years for a superb all-purpose new ground. Two seasons after that they were relegated for only the second time in their long and illustrious history.
It’s been quite a decade for the Lions, a side that was originally named Kispest FC until being taken over by the Ministry of Defence in 1949 and reimagined as Honved. This translates as ‘homeland defence’.
Becoming the Hungarian Army team certainly had its benefits in an era when the country was a communist Soviet satellite state. Greater funding was afforded to a club that to this point had still to win a trophy. Better facilities became available too.
And with the national boss Gusztav Sebes very much involved in the transformation, it also meant that Honved had first pick on players who made up Hungary’s greatest ever period.
Several of the fabled ‘Mighty Magyars’ played for them, not least Ferenc Puskas, the most magnificent talent of them all.
Naturally enough, silverware followed and plenty of it and when Honved’s renown extended beyond Hungary’s borders a world tour followed.
This ultimately proved to be the club’s undoing, as three of their best players – including Puskas – took the opportunity to flee a country that remained under Soviet rule after a failed revolution.
Puskas went to Real Madrid.
Honved enjoyed a further era of dominance in the Eighties, a ‘Second Golden Age’ leading to a remarkable seven league titles in 11 campaigns.
4) Debreceni VSC
Debreceni VSC were formed in 1902 but didn’t reach the top tier until 1944, prior to that playing second fiddle in Hungary’s second largest city to a club named Bocskai FC.
When Bocskai dissolved in 1940 several of their best players transferred over and Debreceni’s rise began.
Yet still we have to fast-forward many decades to get to the good stuff, with the residents of the Nagyerdei Stadion – Bocskai’s old home – being very much a modern phenomenon.
The Loki – so nicknamed due to their proud railway heritage – claimed their first ever Nemzeti Bajnoksag crown in 2003 and after that there was no stopping them, winning six of the next nine league championships.
A relegation in 2021 surprised but that proved to be merely a blip and even if they’re no longer short-priced in the sports betting to top the pile, Debrecen remain a force to be reckoned with, consistently in the mix come May.
3) Ujpest
Due to the high number of clubs based in the capital there are several derbies in and around Budapest.
Nothing however quite compares to Ujpest taking on Ferencvaros, a clash that has been termed ‘insane’ and the most violent rivalry in world football.
When not butting heads with their hated neighbours, the Purple and Whites go about their business at the Szusza Ferenc Stadion – named after a striker who scored an astonishing 393 goals in 462 outings for the club between 1940 and 1961 – maintaining their top-flight status, sometimes narrowly.
Last term, they were firmly in the relegation mix until the final fortnight.
Really though, when it comes to Ujpest it’s all about the nineteen-seventies, a period that saw them crowned league champions nine times inside of a decade as well as play out a European Cup semi-final against Bayern Munich.
The free-scoring side reached the quarter finals either side of that loss.
2) MTK Budapest
Across their 121 year history MTK have won the league 23 times and the Hungarian Cup 12 times. A prominent presence right from the forming of organised football in Hungary they were at their most formidable post-WW1 up to 1930.
In that timeframe, Magyar Testgyakorlok Kore Budapest Futball Club – to given them their full meaty moniker – won the league ten times in 12 seasons.
Since then the trophies may have slowed to a steady drip but this is a club with substantial boasts, not least the pioneering of the deep-lying centre-forward that turned football tactics on its head in the Fifties.
Adopted by the Mighty Magyars it contributed to Hungary reaching a World Cup final in 1954.
There was also a European Cup Winners Cup final attained in 1964, MTK losing in extra-time to Sporting CP.
In 2019, one of the giants of Hungarian football were relegated but you can’t keep a great institution down, the club returning to where it belongs in 2023.
1) Ferencvaros
The Nemzeti Bajnoksag has been won for six seasons running by Zoldek (‘The Greens’) meaning the football odds on them making it a straight seven are slimmer than a supermodel’s waistline.
By some considerable distance they are the best team in Hungary at present and the most successful club in the country’s history, winning the league on 35 occasions as well as lifting the Magyar Kupa (Hungarian Cup) 24 times.
Furthermore, they have long been Hungary’s most prominent representative in Europe, winning the Inter-Cites Fairs Cup in the mid-Sixties and regularly participating in the European Cup.
In more recent years, they have reached the group stage of the Champions League but typically feature in the Europa League.
Moreover, their roll-call of greats past reads like a who’s who of Hungarian legends, not least Florian Albert, who won the European Footballer of the Year merit in 1967.
Nicknamed the ‘Emperor’ he has rather wonderfully been described as the most elegant player of all time.
*Credit for the photos in this article belongs to Alamy*
