Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

cleverly into the sloping side of a railway embankment. The field was not fenced off from the railway line [...] because in such a way the embankment did not fall outside the premises and could thus be used, free of charge, as a grandstand.” Later on, showers were installed, “not so much for the purposes of taking a shower but in order that the old boys had somewhere to cool their beer and wine.” Construction expenses ran into a total of 12,000 forints, but Antony, an FTC fan, waived half the sum afterwards. The primitive facility retained a familial atmosphere until its demise with record crowds not exceeding fifteen hundred.

The football team, which had won several championships, undertook a great venture in 1910 when it started the construction of a sports centre on üllői út to plans by Aladár Mattyók. The stadium included a 110 by 65 metre grass football pitch, an athletics track with a tilting curve and a wooden grandstand (terrace A) with a gymnasium underneath. The club house-and a restaurant inside it-was designed by the Jánszky-Szi- vessy team of architects. A crowd of about twenty thousand turned out for the opening ceremony on 12 February 1911, and in November the same year it was already Hungary’s national eleven that took on Austria

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