Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)
competed under the name Hungária, the seating capacity of each stadium had reached 40,000 with the wooden terraces almost collapsing under the weight of the crowds turning out for the great games. MTK was devastated by the war. Cinder the anti- Jewish laws its stadium was confiscated to be given to the Hungarian National Defence Association. Although the sports complex was returned to its owner in a year, the club was expelled from the championship in 1944, and by the end of the siege the stadium had been reduced to rubble. The terraces collapsed and the timber was gradually stolen for fuel. Soon after the war the grandstand was rebuilt of concrete, but the structure resulting from the hurried work crumbled in a matter of months. For a few years the team was obliged to play on the field of FTC, the arch enemy. Reorganisation also caught up with MTK: the football team could play on under the successive names of Textile Workers, Bastion and eventually the Red Flag. In the meantime the new, circular, terraces made of reinforced concrete had been completed by 1952. The pitch was given electric lighting in the eighties and the stands were renovated. The terraces currently have a seating capacity of 22,000. Although a sports hall was erected for MTK in 1978 on the front facing Hungária körút, the club has had to phase out its indoor ball-game sections. BKV Forward (No. 2 Sport utca; Hungária körút, district Vili) The Budapest Road and Railway Transport Company (BKVT) had a sports facility built for workers employed in the transport industry on the outer Thököly út near Bosnyák tér. When the post-war boom reached its peak in the late 1920s, the management of Budapest Capital City Transport Co. finally resolved to build a really modern sports complex on Hungária körút. Characteristic of the dimensions that the undertaking took is that those living in the neighbourhood were convinced that what was under construction near the MTK sports grounds was really to be a national stadium. The complex, which featured circular ferro-concrete terraces and a covered grandstand with a capacity of 39
