Hungarian football has undergone great developments in the past decade. Our national team has qualified for three consecutive European championships (2016, 2021, 2024). We have a player getting regular playtime in one of the most famous and prestigious clubs in the world (Dominik Szoboszlai at Liverpool). Also, the most popular and successful Hungarian club Ferencváros has reached the group stage in a European competition five times in a row, even qualifying for the knock-out stage the last two times.
However, one criticism Hungarian club football still often gets is that it is only Ferencváros who has any significant success on the international stage, and they do so by fielding mostly foreign players in their games.
This year, however, that is not the case.
Ferencváros still has a good chance to qualify for the secondary European club competition Europa League. They face the Bosnian side Borac Banja Luka in the play-offs, going into the clash as the heavy favourites.
So far, FTC has knocked out the Welsh The New Saints F.C. with two victories (5–0 at home, 2–1 on the road) out of the Champions League qualifiers, but was eliminated by the Danish champions FC Midtjylland in the next round, thus they were moved to the Europa League.
This year, the group stage in all European competitions will be replaced by a new ‘league phase’. 36 teams (up from 32 in the previous format) will be playing eight games against eight teams, four as hosts and four as visitors, and the final league positions will be determined based on those games. The top eight teams will automatically qualify for the round of 16, while the 9th–24th place finishers will be playing a play-off round for the round of 16.
If FTC were to lose their two-legged tie against the Bosnian team, they would still qualify for the league stage of the Conference League, so
European football for the Hungarian champions is guaranteed for the autumn again.
However, this year, we have two more Hungarian teams vying for a spot in a European competition.
Hungarian Cup title holders Paks is still in the race. They are playing Mladá Boleslav from Czechia in the play-off round of the Conference League.
Paks’s Europan campaign did not have the most promising start, to say the least. They were drawn to play the Romanian Cup winners, the second-division (!) team CS Corvinul Hunedoara in the first round of the Europa League qualifiers. Despite their opponents coming from the second division of their country, Paks got battered 4–0 at home. This defeat was made even more embarrassing because of the intense Hungarian-Romanian rivalry in football. Paks won the away leg 2–0, but evidently, it was not enough to advance, thus they were eliminated to the Conference League.
In CL, they managed to get past the favoured Cypriot side AEK Larcana with two victories, and with an impressive 5–0 scoreline on aggregate. They then knocked out Mornar from Bar, Montenegro (3–0 win at home, 2–2 tie away).
What makes Paks’s performance even more impressive is that
they only have Hungarian players on their roster.
Puskás Akadémia got a lucky draw in the second qualifying round of the Conference League. The Ukrainian club Dnipro-1 could not field enough players due to bankruptcy, so the Felcsút club advanced without play. In the third round, Puskás faced Ararat-Armenia from, evidently, Armenia. The Hungarian club 1–0 in the first leg away from home. The home game, however, proved to be a lot more difficult than originally expected. It ended in a hectic 3–3 tie. Artem Favorov scored a last-minute free kick to spare Puskás having to go to extra time.
Puskás now get to play against Fiorentina, a famous club from Italy. The ‘Violets’ reached the final in the last two seasons of the Conference League, and finished 8th in the Serie A last season.
The Hungarian league is currently ranked 22nd out of 55 national leagues by UEFA
based on its teams’ combined coefficient, placing between Sweden (23rd) and Ukraine (21st). Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, the English Premier League is ranked #1.
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