Fehérvár FC, as they are known today, used to be a powerhouse in Hungarian football. Under the names Videoton, MOL Vidi, MOL Fehérvár, and the current Fehárvár FC, they played a UEFA Cup final against Real Madrid exactly 40 years ago in 1985, and have won three Hungarian championship titles and two Hungarian Cups. The last championship-winning season was in as recently as 2018 for the red-and-blues.
This season, however, ended in sorrow for them, as Fehérvár got relegated from the first division of Hungarian football for the first time in 25 years, finishing 11th out of 12.
This prompted a public dispute between Székesfehárvár (the city where the club is located) Mayor András Cser-Palkovics and billionaire club owner István Garancsi about the management of the club. During the ‘beef’, Garancsi suggested that if the Mayor is so knowledgeable about how to run a professional football club, he is willing to sell the team to the local municipality for a nominal fee of 1 HUF ($0.0029).
Originally, Cser-Palkovics was not willing to take the offer—however, the toothpaste could not be put back in the tube, as Garancsi was no longer interested in managing the club, the existence of which was in peril by then.
So, on Tuesday, 10 June, the Mayor announced the acquisition had been completed, and the Székesfehérvár municipality has bought Fehérvár FC for 1 HUF.
‘Wherever I went in the city, people stopped me and asked me to save the club,’ Mayor Cser-Palkovics said, as quoted by the Hungarian sports paper Nemzeti Sport. ‘Thus, there was a clear community need for the municipality to take football in the city under its wings…The City Council and I believe that, after some necessary austerity measures, there is enough money at Fehérvár FC’s disposal to complete the next season in the second division. Therefore the city will not have to contribute financially to the operation of the professional club.’
The Mayor also explained that his city will be actively looking for a new investor for the club; and they are only willing to take on the ownership for one season.
Evidently, this is not very soothing to hear for Fehérvár fans. As the Mayor explained, winning promotion back to the NB 1 is not among the goals for next season—rather, it is simply staying alive and avoiding relegation into the semi-professional third division. That is quite a big disappointment, given that Fehárvár FC started this season on the international stage, in the UEFA Conference League qualifiers after finishing fourth in the league in 2024.
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