Derby Days, Budapest: Ujpest vs Ferencvaros

The Athletic is attending some of the most ferocious derbies across Europe, charting the history of the continent’s most deep-rooted and volatile rivalries. The series opened in Greece with the Derby of the Eternal Enemies, then the Old Firm in Scotland and Le Classique in France.

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We visited Liverpool as they welcomed Manchester United to Anfield, were in Belgrade for the Eternal Derby and Italy for Derby della Capitale, and watched Ajax take on Feyenoord in De Klassieker. Last month we attended Hamburg’s Stadtderby.

Now to Hungary and the derby that splits Budapest.

When is a rivalry not a rivalry?

Or maybe, more accurately, when does a lack of competition make it something else? What does it become if it’s terminally one-sided? A feud? Bullying?

Most of football’s biggest derbies or rivalries are between two similarly sized, broadly competitive teams. There will be periods of dominance — Bayern always winning the Bundesliga at Dortmund’s expense; whichever Old Firm side is stronger at any particular time — but even when one side wins all the titles, there’s usually some variance in the individual games.

Ujpest versus Ferencvaros, the fiercest rivalry in Hungarian football, is a little different. Or at least it has been for the last decade or so.

For this is a rivalry that has been spectacularly one-sided. Ferencvaros have won the last four league titles and will make it five in the coming weeks. But more painfully for Ujpest fans, they haven’t beaten their Budapest rivals since 2015. Before the derby match which The Athletic attended, that’s 22 games, including one cup final. They had lost the last 12, and only managed five draws since their last victory.

And yet it remains the most anticipated match in Hungarian football, between two clubs — or at least two sets of fans — who absolutely despise each other.

In recent times, this derby has been defined by two 6-0s.

In 2006, Ferencvaros were demoted to the second tier as punishment for financial irregularities; years of living on the edge of their means had caught up with them. They spent three seasons there, winning promotion in 2009, and in the second season of their return, 2010-11, they travelled to Ujpest’s Szusza Ferenc Stadion, just north of the city centre. 

Ujpest won 6-0. A historic triumph, up there with probably the most dramatic encounter between the two: back in 1970, when the Hungarian league had a two-legged play-off to determine the champions, and Ujpest came from behind twice to win the tie, and the title.

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For the 6-0, Krisztian Simon opened the scoring. He’s still a Ujpest player, having made his debut in 2009. Simon returned to the club in 2017 after two years at 1860 Munich; he has been at Ujpest ever since. “We made history in that game,” he tells The Athletic. “It was something remarkable. There’s no other game that was more important than that. I can never forget it.”

In a frankly spectacular act of hubris, Ujpest changed the name of their matchday magazine to ‘Hatnull’ (‘6-0’) to commemorate the victory. This was a time when Ujpest were the stronger side, so to a point you can understand them lording their historical triumph. But maybe they should have wondered: ‘Will this come back to bite us in the arse?’ It took 12 years.

At the start of this season (2022-23), Ferencvaros again travelled to Ujpest but this time enacted sweet, perfect revenge: 6-0. It was 4-0 at half-time, and some of Ferencvaros’ more historically savvy players realised what they could do and made sure the entire dressing room knew.

‘Hatnull’ was quickly renamed. It’s now called ‘1885’, after the year of Ujpest’s founding.

Historically, this isn’t Hungarian football’s big rivalry.

That was Ferencvaros vs MTK, who between them won every league title from 1903 to 1929, before Ujpest got involved and started to nab a few. Then came World War II and MTK’s decline. They traditionally had a Jewish fanbase, and the vast majority of Hungary’s Jewish population was killed or driven out of the country.

After the war and the start of the communist regime in Hungary, most of the big football clubs were ‘assigned’ to various arms of the government. Honved, who would provide most of the great ‘Mighty Magyars’ side of the 1950s, were the army team. Ujpest became the team of the interior ministry — the secret police. Ferencvaros were seen as too much of a rebel club to be assigned, which meant they often fell foul of the regime.

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For example, there’s the story of Ferenc Deak, a great striker for Ferencvaros in the 1940s and 1950s. The story goes he was at a holiday resort and one evening asked the band to play the Ferencvaros anthem. A couple of state officials were there and objected. There was an altercation and he was supposedly given the choice between jail or signing for Ujpest. He chose the latter, kept scoring goals and there’s now a street named after him near Ujpest’s stadium.

Ujpest were initially not officially in Budapest. It was a separate town, and even today feels suburban. Ferencvaros are named after the inner city district they are from, which was home to a number of German immigrants. Their nickname became Fradi (pronounced like Frodo, but with an ‘i’ at the end), which is a contraction of Franzstadt, the German spelling of their name. To this day, they’re interchangeably referred to as Fradi/Ferencvaros.

When the regime took over the clubs, most were renamed. Ferencvaros briefly became Kinizsi, after a Hungarian general from the 1950s. Ujpest were dubbed Budapesti Dozsa, which after the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956 reverted to Ujpesti Dozsa. The second part referred to the leader of a peasant’s revolt in the early 1500s called Gyorgy Dozsa but was really a way of tying them to the interior ministry that controlled them.

Dozsa was dropped after the fall of the communist government in 1989, but even now if a Fradi fan (or anyone really) wants to needle Ujpest, they call them Dozsa. Speak to most Ujpest fans and they will say it doesn’t actually annoy them, that it’s an immature attempt to irk them and it definitely doesn’t work. Definitely. Absolutely not. Think of it as a more politically charged version of the Tottenham fans who still refer to Arsenal as ‘Woolwich’.

Still, it may have had an impact. “It took time for people to forget,” says journalist and Ujpest fan Aron Aronyassy. “It could have given other teams extra motivation: ‘Those are the guys who were the team of the ministry, we can’t lose to them.’”

The two teams were not natural or fierce rivals until the late 1960s, when MTK and Honved had both faded from prominence, and Ferencvaros and Ujpest became the dominant teams in Hungary. Between 1967 and 1981 Ferencvaros and Ujpest won 13 out of 15 league titles, with Ujpest taking seven in a row between 1969 and 1975.

Mutual players stoked the rivalry. A favourite story is Zoltan Ebedli, a famously languid playmaker who played for Fradi for a decade before falling out with their manager in 1984. He left and signed for Ujpest (like when Johan Cruyff left Ajax and signed for Feyenoord out of spite). In the first game between the two, he scored and showed a hitherto unseen turn of pace to celebrate in front of his old fans. Nevertheless, he returned to Ferencvaros the following season.

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The pair were also pretty good in the 1990s, which is when Ujpest won the most recent of their 20 league titles. If Ferencvaros are champions this year (they’re nine points clear with four games to go at the time of writing), they will have 34.

Hungarian football has always been Budapest-centric: 101 of the 119 league titles have gone to clubs from the capital. But in the last few years, it’s become totally dominated by Ferencvaros.

They have won the last four titles and their regular participation in European competition means they have the money to consolidate their dominance. Nobody feels that more keenly than Ujpest.

While they can dry their eyes on their many trophies, it has even taken the edge off for Ferencvaros. “We expect to win it every time,” says Fradi fan, Gabor. “The specialness has gone a little bit. It’s not as contested as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but it’s still the most anticipated league game of the season by far.”

The frequency of the games also dulls their impact a little. The Hungarian top division has 12 teams, and its current structure sees everyone play each other three times, once at home, once away, with the venue of the third decided randomly.

Ujpest’s issues aren’t just limited to this fixture. They haven’t seriously challenged for the title in a long time, finishing a relatively distant second to Debrecen in 2009. Part of the issue is their ownership: the current president is Roderick Duchatelet, son of former Charlton owner Roland, who is just about as popular as his old man was in south east London.

A reluctance to spend on players has seen, in the eyes of many fans, the team stagnate, and Duchatelet is trying to sell. He almost did last summer, to a consortium headed by former player Zoltan Kovacs, before the funding fell through. Another takeover is understood to be in progress but, for the fans, it’s a case of believing it when they see it.

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For Ujpest, it’s worse than if they were in a different division. If, say, they had dropped down the leagues and hadn’t faced Fradi for years, the antipathy could fester, but beneath the surface. They could hate Ferencvaros from afar, the sight of them lifting title after title galling, sure, but with the acceptance that the two exist in different realities.

As it is, Ferencvaros’s superiority isn’t in the abstract, it’s always there, and Ujpest are constantly reminded of it. It’s like being forced to make thrice-yearly visits to your school bully’s home — and they’ve gone on to be really successful and happy and live in a big house with one of those big range cookers and a modest but well-curated wine cellar.

It’s not great for the rest of the country either. The neutral could cope with one team winning the league each year as long as there is someone to give them a bloody nose every now and then, but Ujpest haven’t been able to do that. “Everybody misses it,” says journalist Gergely Marosi. “Hungarian football needs a good Ujpest.”

For Ujpest at least, the game is still a huge deal.

“It is the most important game of the season,” says Simon, talking the day before the game. “At the beginning of the season, it’s the first game we look for. I’m very happy that after a very long time, we can finally play at home twice.”

Having been at the club for so long, he takes on the responsibility of educating newbie players. “With the young players who played at the academy, we don’t have to explain it to them. It’s like a genetic marker. But with foreign players, we tell them what it’s about, show them videos of previous games. We always show them the atmosphere, the choreography, how much our fans look forward to this game. For them, whatever we do in the rest of the season, it doesn’t matter because this is the match you have to win.”

According to Simon, the fact that Ujpest haven’t won in so long doesn’t make it any less special. “Absolutely not. We’re not afraid of this challenge. If you go out there being afraid, it means your destiny is already decided. We always play without any fear.”

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Spirits are a little higher this time because of the return of Nebojsa Vignjevic as coach, shortly before the derby. Vignjevic was previously manager from 2013 to 2020, winning the Hungarian Cup twice in that time, and has been brought back to salvage a season that at one point looked like it might end in relegation. He stabilised results and moved Ujpest clear of trouble. Now, finally beating their great rivals would cap off a satisfactory campaign.

“Just talking about it gives me goosebumps,” says Simon.

Two hours before kick-off, there is the whiff of pyro before you can see the stadium.

In the Budapest spring sunshine, the atmosphere is aggressive but not especially threatening. It’s a sea of purple around the Szusza Ferenc Stadion: the visiting Ferencvaros fans have been carefully funnelled into the away end. They’re mostly clad in black rather than their team colours of green because, in the words of their ultras’ website, they “need to move through the highly infested zones of Ujpest”.

Both sets of ultras begin the game with large banners stretched across the front of their enclosures. Fradi’s effort reads: “A bajnok cim ujra nekunk jar!” Basically: “The title belongs to us yet again”.

Ujpest’s is much more political — surprisingly political, in fact — and includes a pun: “Ti vagytok a Nerencvaros”. It’s a reference to Fradi’s club president, Gabor Kubatov, a member of Hungary’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party, and a hugely controversial declaration they made in 2010 — the Nemzeti Egyuttmukodes Rendszere, or NER for short. It roughly translates as the National Cooperation System but in reality, was a way of curbing freedoms for large swathes of the Hungarian population. The banner was essentially saying “You are the club of the government”, and by extension the club of this oppressive legislation.

The point is hammered home by a tifo with a variety of other political statements, tying Fradi to Fidesz and suggesting that they enjoy favoured treatment because of their political connections, and a large picture of a frog-like monster — the Fradi ultras’ group is called the Green Monsters —  clad in the orange of Fidesz.

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There is a minor irony to Ujpest — the team of the interior ministry during the communist regime — using state affiliation as a stick with which to beat their opponents. It’s also quite surprising given that Ujpest fans aren’t exactly known as ardent leftists or anti-government protestors. But it perhaps speaks to their frustration at being left behind by clubs who, as they perceive it, have an unfair advantage.

Ujpest start pretty well. Their lively left-winger Kevin Csoboth creates and wastes a couple of chances. Cruel hope begins to compete with the pyro smoke for space in the Budapest air. But then, after 24 minutes, Ferencvaros take the lead when Amer Gojak is given as much time as he pleases to curl a shot into the top corner from the edge of the area.

For a while it looks like Fradi will stroll to another straightforward win but, 10 minutes before the break, Csoboth stands up a delightful cross from the left to the back post, and Fernand Goure, the Ivory Coast striker on loan from Westerlo in Belgium, slams home the volley.

Vignjevic is a ball of energy in a sharp suit and black suede boots, urging his players on. His opposite number Stanislav Cherchesov, the former Russia coach, is more sedate, strolling around the technical area in jeans and white trainers, with the relaxed vibe of a man who’s just got in from walking his dog. Or, if you like, a manager who isn’t especially worried that his team have been pegged back.

And, as it turns out, with good reason. Shortly after half-time, Gojak collects another rebound in a similar position and again finds the corner. Not long after that, substitute Krisztian Lisztes Junior whips a loose ball home and the Ujpest fans fall limply silent. Lisztes is a popular scorer, the 17-year-old son of Krisztian Lisztes Senior, a Ferencvaros legend who had three spells at the club, and was also part of Werder Bremen’s Bundesliga-winning team in 2004. Lisztes Jnr is the last Fradi player to leave the pitch at the end having taken the acclaim of the fans, accosted on his way by an absolutely vast security guard — who looks like he could be the bouncer at a bouncer convention — for a selfie.

The referee has to stop the game on three occasions to wait for smoke to clear as more flares are set off in the stands. There’s a certain symbolism to the interval after Fradi’s second goal, as green smoke gradually envelops and covers the Ujpest fans, players and stadium. Soon, you can see nothing else; an entire club eclipsed by their rivals.

The match ends 3-2 to the visitors, after Simon hustles brilliantly to conjure an injury-time consolation from nothing. There there is something deeply fitting about him being the man to score, the kid who grew up with Ujpest and has suffered so many of these disappointments, scoring to give them a tiny bit of hope.

But it’s too little, too late and the winless run will stretch into another season. That’s now 13 defeats against Ferencvaros in a row, 23 without a victory for Ujpest. “I think we didn’t believe totally that we could win,” says Vignjevic afterwards. And frankly, who could blame them?

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The gulf in class is pretty obvious. Ferencvaros scored pretty much when they wanted to, then broadly kept Ujpest at bay. If you stripped out the lively crowd and just watched the game devoid of that context, you’d probably assume it was a cup tie in which an accomplished power did a professional job against a lower-tier underdog.

But of course, you can’t remove that context. Another year has passed and it feels like the Ujpest fans, who are as loud as ever, are no closer to their rivals. The Ujpest players stay on the pitch for a few minutes to salute their fans and, despite another defeat, they are applauded off.

It’s a recognition that they are way behind, but fought anyway. And there’s a bit of hope in there too. Maybe next season. Maybe. Most of us can probably see a little bit of themselves in them.

Explore the venues, from the stadia to where to eat and stay when visiting Budapest in our interactive Google map:

(Photos in top image: Laszlo Szirtesi via Getty Images; designed by Sam Richardson)

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