This Wednesday evening, Sporting take on its Hungarian counterpart. A presentation of our first opponent of the UEFA Europa League championship phase.
Ferencvárosi Torna Club has the honour of being founded in the 19th century. The omnisport club has been in existence since May 3, 1899, a total of 125 years. It is one of Hungary's most popular and, above all, most successful clubs, with 35 league titles and 24 national cups. In 1965, the Green & Whites also won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (predecessor of the UEFA Cup), beating Juventus in the final after defeating AS Roma and Manchester United earlier on. The Budapest club then lost a Cup Winners' Cup final to Dynamo Kiev in 1975, but remains the only Hungarian club to have won a European Cup.
Six consecutive titles
Since the creation of the Hungarian league in 1901, Ferencváros had participated in every season of the First Division until 2007, when they were relegated to the Second Division due to financial difficulties. After three years of exile, however, the Green and Whites returned to the top flight, where they have remained ever since. Housed in a new, modern 20,000-capacity stadium (Groupama Aréna) since 2014, our future opponents have enjoyed a fine run of six consecutive domestic titles (RSC Anderlecht's record stands at five). They currently share the lead in their league with five wins from five matches.
Ferencváros have twice reached the Champions League group stage. Most recently in 2020, and before that in 1995 after knocking out... RSC Anderlecht in two matches. Both teams were defending champions. The Hungarians came to the Parc Astrid with a 0-1 win (a result which cost German coach Herbert Neumann his job), before forcing Brussels into a 1-1 draw in Budapest under interim coach Raymond Goethals. A double duel against a Hungarian club with only one precedent: a double defeat by Vörös Lobogo (MTK Budapest) on our European debut in 1955.
Did you know?
Eight Hungarian players have played for RSCA, although most of them did so in the 60s (Miklós Dacsev, Árpád Fazekas, Sandor Karsay, Gyula Nemes and József Wölbling) and are therefore not the most familiar to our current fans. This is not the case for players such as Attila Ladinsky (a goalscorer in the 70s who scored 36 goals in 67 matches), Flórián Urbán (who had a brief spell with RSCA in the late 90s) and, above all, Roland Juhász. The central defender delighted Sporting for eight years, proudly wearing our colors for 178 matches. One Belgian player currently wears the Ferencváros colors: Philippe Rommens. The Antwerp-born midfielder was formed at PSV and will play his first official game on Belgian soil.
