A Cup Final With Everything: Hooligans and Racists

Tibor Ladányi, László Zsidai, Tamás Kulcsár

I usually do not write about personal experiences or a sporting event that I was at and witnessed with my own eyes or how I saw something. What I experienced on May first has me pretty upset and I thought I would write about it. In case anyone missed it Debreceni VSC who is leading the Hungarian first division was playing MTK Budapest who is one point away from securing promotion back to the top flight, for the Hungarian Cup at the Puskás stadium in Budapest. MTK Budapest historically is considered a Jewish team or a team that was supported by the Jewish community just like Tottenham Hotspurs in England and Ajax in the Netherlands, and Debreceni VSC who was supported by the railway workers in the eastern part of the country. The basic scoop on Debrecen is that they are going for their 6th title in the past eight seasons and just about have it in the bag along with a spot in the Champions League. MTK Budapest last season was relegated to the second division, this season they have yet to lose and have pretty much guaranteed themselves promotion. Just like in any other league, winning the domestic cup earns you a sport in the Europa League unless you have a spot in the Champions League which DVSC already seems to have, and there for MTK would take the Europa League spot even if they lost the cup. Based off of all of this regardless of what happened in the cup final both teams can safely say that the season has been a success. About 12 of us decided that it would be worth the 1000 HUF (about $5) to check out a cup final.

The match itself was exciting and had everything a person that is not a big fan of football (soccer) would have also had a great time. There was a nice family friendly environment in the 4,000+ fans that were in attendance.The first 45 minutes was exciting back and forth with both teams having scoring opportunities. The match was scoreless until the 45th minute when Norbert Könyves put MTK up 1-0 with a blast into the bottom right corner of the net. Both teams made some substitutions early in the second half and DVSC tied it up in the 51th with a goal from French international Selim Bouadla with Péter Szakály putting them up 2-1 five minutes later. In the 60th minute DVSC defender Balázs Nikolov picked up his second yellow card which left Debrecen a man short for the rest of the match. Two minutes later MTK capitalized on this when Tibor Ladányi lofted the ball over the keepers outstretched arms to even the match at 2-2. MTK kept Debrecen under pressure for the remainder of the match when in the 87th minute when László Zsidai put the team from Budapest up 3-2 and it seemed the cup was in the bag for the blue and whites. The MTK youngsters were unable to hold on to the lead for the last three minutes when Szakály struck again for DVSC and sending the match into overtime. After two times 15 minutes the match was still 3-3 which meant it was time for a shootout. The shootout went to the 9th round when DVSC keeper István Verpecz saved Dávid Kálnoki Kis’ shot to give Debrecen their third Hungarian Cup in five seasons.

As we left the stadium with our heads a bit lower then we started the match since we were pulling for MTK we could not really complain since the match had six goals, overtime and a shootout and a player being sent off. We also kept on saying its ok these two teams will meet up again for the Hungarian Super Cup as well. On the metro ride back to the city center at one of the stops two boys in their late teens-early twenties who thought they were hard asses went up to a guy in his mid twenties sitting next to his girlfriend and wearing his MTK jersey and one of them spits on him and demanded he take his jersey off, this punk then follows this up by stating to everyone on the metro that he doesn't want to see any Jewish stuff. The guy with his girlfriend pulls his jersey off embarrassingly and seemed like he was happy nothing happened. The two guys work their way down the car until they get to us were by now there are five of us left from the original group that we had went with. Three of saw what had originally happened at the other end of the car however our friend who organized the excursion had his jersey on as well did not see what had happened. The two guys come up to our friend Zoli, who is rather large and around 190 cm, and ask him “I bet you are Jewish as well so you better take your shirt off”, keep in mind none of us are Jewish. To this Zoli responds back be saying you want it then take it off me. This goes back and forth a couple of times as the two instigators can not come up with anything original. Eventually Zoli gets sick of this and asks them what is their problem with MTK Budapest and what team do they root for. Of course we knew that they didn't care about soccer at all, they were just trying to act like hardasses.

In the end nothing happened but we all felt sick, after a nice afternoon and evening watching some football the day had to be ruined by some clowns like this. There is no room for this in professional sports. When you think of hooliganism you think of England but this would never happen at the FA Cup final, unfortunately these acts still happen in Hungary and other former Soviet bloc countries. When one goes to a sporting event they are supposed to be there to enjoy the family friendly environment, root for their team and hope that your team gets the W.

Gone But Not Forgotten

I recently read an article in Sports Illustrated about the Titanic and how there were two world class tennis players on the ship when it went down. Both of them survived in different manners and about three months later they faced each other in an exhilarating five set match. Karl Behr would defeat Dick Williams 0-6, 7-9, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 at the Longwood Bowl in Boston. Williams would go one to be U.S. singles champion, be doubles champion at Wimbledon and at the 1924 Olympics won the mixed doubles gold medal. Behr would be a member of a number of Davis Cups teams and would eventually be on a winning Davis Cup team with Williams.

Dick Williams and Karl Behr

This got me thinking about the numerous transportation disasters in which members of sports teams or entire sports teams had perished what might have happened if they had survived.

On May 4th 1949 a plane carrying the entire Torino FC team crashed into a hillside as it was returning from Portugal after playing a friendly versus Benfica with 18 players, five club officials and the crew perished in the accident. Today Torino is known as the ‘other’ team in Turin next to Juventus and this season they won the Italian second division to get back to the Seria A. In 1949 they were the defending champions and were a star studded squad hoping to repeat as champions when the disaster happened. Three of the players did not make the trip, Sauro Toma was injured, legendary Hungarian László Kubala who was just recently reunited with his family after they fled communist Hungary stayed in Turin to be with his sick son, and Luigi Gioliano did not receive his passport in time. For the remaining four matches in that season Turino had their junior squad play the matches, in honor of the fallen the remaining four opponents also sent out their junior team to face Torino’s. Torino would win the final four matches and win the Seria A for the 5th time in the 1940s, this would be the last trophy the club would win until they won the league again in 1976.

On February 6th 1958 a flight made a third attempt at taking off from the Münich airport but was never actually able to lift off the ground and skidded off the runway into a fence and a house. Sitting on this flight to Manchester was the Manchester United football team who was flying back after a 3-3 tie against Red Star in Belgrade. Eight players and three staff members died in the crash. At that time Manchester United was coming off back to back titles and would end up making a run to the semifinals of the European Cup when they lost to eventual runner up AC Milan. Among the survivors was nine players among them Sir Bobby Charlton and team manager Matt Busby. Two of the players who survived suffered career ending injuries in the crash

On October 29th 1960 Cal Poly football team was planning on flying back to California after playing a game in Ohio against Bowling Green State University. This ended up being one of those situations where anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. The plain was a World War II aircraft that was taking off from the Toledo airport when it crashed, broke in two and caught fire. Twenty two of the 48 people on board died including sixteen players. At the time of takeoff the aircraft was about 2000 pounds over the max capacity, visibility was less than what was prohibited for a commercial plane at takeoff and there was partial power loss in one of the engines at takeoff. It was later found out that the pilot of the plane was flying with a suspended licence. After the crash Cal Poly cancelled their last three games of the season and would not play a game outside of California until 1969.

Laurence Owen

There has always been a debate about the Sports Illustrated jinx and if it really exists. The February 13th, 1961 Sports Illustrated cover featured Laurence Owen with the caption “America’s most exciting girl skater”. Two days later on the 15th a Boeing 707 crashed while circling the Brussels airport waiting to land. The plane crashed to the ground and caught fire as it hit the ground killing all 72 passengers which included Laurence Owen and the rest of the U.S. Figure Skating National team on their way to the world championships in Prague. The flight had a number of world champion hopefuls, the U.S. had dominated world figure skating in the 1950s and looked to continue at the 1961 world championships. The world championships were cancelled because of the tragedy. This crash wiped the U.S. skating program off the map. No American would win a major competition until the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble France.

1970 November 14th Marshall University’s football team was returning home from a defeat to East Carolina when the plane carrying 37 members of the team and a number of boosters crashed as it was making its final approach. The entire program was wiped out except for a couple of players and two coaches. The idea of disbanding the program altogether was brought up but a squad was put together for the 1971 season with players from the the JV team and athletes from other sports, some who had never played football in their life.

I am sure most of you remember remember when this past September 7th when Lokamotiv Yaroslav was flying to Minsk Belarus to kick off the KHL season against Dinamo Minsk. Apparently the weather conditions were not ideal and the plane did not reach a high enough altitude to clear a tower which it hit and caught fire. The team perished in the accident, among them were former NHL players Pavol Demitra, Ruslan Salei, Alexander Karpatsev, Igor Korolev and Brad McCrimmon.