Hungarian Football Federation Turns 125 Years Old

The Federation of Hungarian Footballers (MLSZ) was founded 125 years ago on this day, on January 19, 1901, by representatives of thirteen sports clubs in a private room at the Archduke István Hotel, situated at Akadémia utca in downtown Budapest.

The website of the federation explains that the footballers (or soccer players) in Hungary (the part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) weren’t to be part of a wider sports governing body, but that it was considered important for an independent football association to be established. Therefore, its foundation was both unique and modern in continental Europe.

It was the dawn of football at that time, with MLSZ becoming only the ninth national football governing body in continental Europe, while only a few countries outside Europe had already founded official national football associations.

A matter of weeks later, the first Hungarian league championship fixture was played and in the fall 1902, the two countries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy played their inaugural official match against each other. This was the first international match in continental Europe to feature two nations, neither of which were British.

In the 1920s, Hungarian club Ferencváros won the Central European Cup, before the 1930s saw Újpest win the Cup of Nations and prevail in the first all-Hungarian Central European Cup final. Meanwhile, on the national team level, Hungary won the silver medal at the 1938 World Cup held in France. The second half saw Tibor Gallowich lay the foundations for the ‘Golden Team’, Hungary’s national side, which became almost unbeatable in regional cup competitions. The 1950s are synonymous with the Golden Team’s successes; an Olympic gold medal, winning the Central European International Cup by beating Italy in the inaugural match of Rome’s Olympic Stadium, defeating England twice and the 4-2 victories over Brazil and Uruguay on the way to the 1954 World Cup final that they lost to Germany in Switzerland.

Two more Olympic football gold medals were won in the 1960s, a decade which also featured appearances in two World Cup quarter-finals and a third-place finish at the 1964 European Championship. At club level, Ferencváros won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (the predecessor of today's Europea League) in 1965. Still in that decade, Ferencváros and Újpest were runners-up in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. The 1970s saw Hungary again reach the World Cup and in the 1980s, Videoton became the most recent Hungarian club to reach a major European final.

Based on its results in 1985, György Mezey’s national team became one of Europe’s best ahead of the World Cup in Mexico, but subsequently results slipped and the 1990s was a period of decline, but recent years have brought encouraging progress, most notably through Hungary’s three consecutive appearances at the UEFA European Championship in 2016, 2021 and 2024.