Robbie Keane's Ferencváros hold off Orban-backed Puskas Akademia

Irish Times

28-05-2025

'This is why I love football!'
Robbie Keane
yells through the smoky haze, addressing the raucous Ferencváros faithful gathered in Budapest to celebrate the club's 36th league title. 'For moments like this. For you guys!'
Ferencváros have looked far from convincing since his appointment in January, but they got the job done. Needing only a point on the final day, they beat Gyor 2–1 to deliver on Keane's primary objective: securing a seventh consecutive league title for Hungary's footballing powerhouse.
Mission accomplished. But this was the closest Ferencváros had been pushed in their historic run. Never before had it gone to the wire. For the first time in seven years, Ferencváros, also known as Fradi, actually had competition. And that came in the form of the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban's club, Puskas Akademia.
Puskas Akademia, rebranded from Felcsut FC in 2007 on Ferenc Puskas's 80th birthday, is Orban's passion project. Located in the village of Felcsut, 45km west of Budapest, where the prime minister spent much of his childhood, the club have risen from obscurity since his return to power in 2010. In 2013 they reached the Hungarian top flight for the first time, and this year nearly secured their first European qualification, falling on penalties to the eventual semi-finalists Fiorentina in the final round of Europa Conference League qualifying.
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Their stadium is the Pancho Arena, an architectural masterpiece built within eyeshot of Orban's childhood home in 2014. Its beauty is undeniable. Its symbolism, inescapable. It's a monument to Orban's vision, with football as both metaphor and mechanism.
'I think Puskas Akademia presents perhaps one of the most transparent cases of political instrumentalisation in European football,' says Gyozo Molnar, professor of sociology of sport and exercise at the University of Worcester. 'The club has received disproportionate state investment which reveals direct connections between political power and club resources, despite limited attendance or sporting tradition in the area.'
Puskas Akademia have received state funding on a staggering scale. According to HVG, between 2010 and 2024, the club and its managing foundation handled a combined budget of around €370m. The money is routed through a web of state subsidies, sponsorships and redirected taxes.
Puskas Akademia's stadium is the Pancho Arena, an architectural masterpiece built within eyeshot of Orban's childhood home. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images
Their wage bill is second only to Ferencváros. But unlike their Budapest rivals – whose academy players featured only 30 times in the league this season – Puskas Akademia's youth players made 118 appearances. At academy level, they are beginning to dominate Hungary's player development landscape, outpacing the country's most historically respected training centres. At senior level, a league title victory feels like more of a when than an if.
Going into this season's final matchday, Puskas Akademia, who had led the title race until April, needed Ferencváros to lose to stand a chance. It was a long shot. Despite Ferencváros's rocky season, at this stage of the calendar Fradi know how to win – they had won seven of their previous eight, the only other being a draw with Puskas in Felcsut. And win they did, with goals either side of half-time from Gabor Szalai and Lenny Joseph putting Keane's men at ease.
Yet Puskas are a club designed not merely to win titles, but to serve as a physical and ideological extension of Orbanism. They are not a football club in the traditional sense. They have no culture, no history, no fanbase. Their average attendance this season was 1,500, boosted massively by away support. But what they do have is power. And in Hungary, power is often enough.
'The club's rapid rise through the divisions to the top tier and European competition reflects Orban's consolidation of power,' Molnar says. 'Functioning as a physical monument to his leadership while normalising the diversion of public resources toward personal political projects.'
But Puskas aren't the only club in the Hungarian league with power. Ferencváros too hold much of their own and, intriguingly, receive support from Orban's party, Fidesz, through direct government subsidies such as the national development ministry, the corporation tax rebate scheme and municipal support.
Puskas Akademia, rebranded from Felcsut FC in 2007 on Ferenc Puskas's 80th birthday, is Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban's passion project. Photograph: Robert Szaniszlo/NurPhoto via Getty Images
And they too have powerful people at the top. In 2011, Gabor Kubatov, vice-president of Fidesz, became president of Ferencváros. At the time the club were in disarray: two years earlier they had been in Hungary's second tier having been relegated for financial irregularities. But this was a club with huge upside, huge potential – the country's most successful and most supported club.
So Kubatov walked in with an agenda: instrumentalise the football club, mobilise the fanbase, harness its potential. Under his leadership Ferencváros were to become more than a football team – they were to be a political, societal and national vehicle.
'Gabor Kubatov has full control and Fradi's success clearly serves a state agenda,' Adam Feko, a journalist at Magyar Narancs, says. 'At one point, the fanbase protested against him, but now no one dares speak ill. Kubatov deliberately sends the message: if Fidesz weren't in power, Fradi would be in trouble.'
That is in large part due to the state funding they receive. In 2021, Atlatszo reported that Fradi received at least 80% of their revenues between 2011 and 2019 from state-linked sources. With funding, the state's vision was to have a Hungarian club competing on the international stage just like the national team.
And it worked. Ferencváros have now been the dominant force in Hungarian football for the best part of a decade and have seen unprecedented success in Europe, qualifying for the group stage of a European competition for the past six years. This season they finished above Porto, Fenerbahce, Nice and Hoffenheim in the Europa League's league phase. The club have been transformed, the fervour reintroduced.
Robbie Keane, head coach of Ferencváros, after the Europa League game against Viktoria Plzen in February. Photograph: Szilvia Micheller/So job done, perhaps? Agenda complete? Time for Puskas Akademia to roll in? Maybe, but this isn't a replacement on the cards. This is a one-two punch. Because both clubs serve very different purposes. If Ferencváros are the people's club made powerful by politics, Puskas Akademia are politics made physical. One is a reward for the masses. The other, a construction.
'Both Ferencváros and Puskas Akademia demonstrate distinctive mechanisms through which football serves political purposes,' Molnar says. 'Puskas Akademia as a nouveau-riche creation directly reflecting and related to individual political power. Ferencváros as the capture and repurposing of authentic, traditional and nationalistic sporting heritage for political legitimacy.
'Together, they illustrate how contemporary authoritarian-leaning governance can effectively utilise both new and traditional sporting institutions to naturalise and further solidify political control while presenting it as cultural and infrastructural revitalisation.'
In this context, Keane's words from Saturday night start to ring hollow, because what does success mean in this climate? What does it mean for the league? Though there is personal glory involved, the real story of Hungarian football under Orban lies beyond the silverware. This isn't just about two state clubs manufactured to vie for success because what's unfolding isn't just about who wins – it's about what victory represents.
Robbie Keane guided Ferencváros to their seventh straight Hungarian title. Photograph: David Balogh - UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images
Ferencváros's domestic dominance and European respectability prove what the state can build with history and support on its side. Puskas Akademia, meanwhile, shows what can be engineered from nothing.
Between the two, a pattern emerges: in Orban's Hungary, football clubs are no longer just teams – they are vehicles. For tradition, for messaging, for legacy. And while Ferencváros continue to lift the trophies, it is Puskas that perhaps best illustrate the architecture of the regime's long-term ambitions.
Because in Hungary today, success need not be sustainable, nor popular, nor even sporting. It need only serve a purpose. In this landscape, function is often secondary to symbolism. Stadiums, school curriculums, news channels, football clubs – each forms part of a broader architecture of control, built to anchor loyalty and cultivate a shared national narrative from the top down.
The question, then, is not just whether Ferencváros will continue to dominate or whether Puskas Akademia will eventually oust them. It's whether Hungarian football can ever again be separated from the system that now so thoroughly envelops it.
Is this why we love football? — Guardian