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

The renovated stadium of Ferencváros

here. From that time on, international games were regularly played in the üllői út stadium. In view of the growing crowd of supporters and the ongoing rivalry with MTK, another major football club, the association had terraces surrounding the pitch on all sides built in 1913, and in the summer of 1924 the whole stadium was renovated. It was then that Mattyók designed a 16 metre high and 134 metre long grandstand (terrace B was also built at that time); everyone was impressed with the monumental proportions of the new instalment. From the summer of 1927 one accident followed the other on üllői út. The grandstand for standing spectators burnt down, while in 1935 stormy winds swept the roof off terrace B to drop it outside the building of the mint. (The pitch being put under new grass at the time, the football team of FTC played its games on the field of another club, called Beszkárt.) Although one of the stands sustained damage during the war, real disaster only struck on 4 May 1947, when the terraces with standing room collapsed during a Hungary-Austria game. Although there were no fatal casualties, many of the 250 spectators falling down suffered lasting injuries.

In any case, Ferencváros was weakened during the post-war period. In 1950, the name of the club was changed first into the awkward Food Workers’ National Trade ünion then, in 1951, into Budapest Kinizsi, not to get its original name FTC back before the end of

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