Hungary. Ranked 18th. Fresh reforms: first, Second Division was back to 2 groups, instead of 1 league – 16 teams played in each group, the winners directly promoted. Second-place teams went to promotion/relegation play-offs against the 13th and 14th finishers in the top division. This was also new. The last change was in the frame of changes introduced in many countries in hope of invigorating the game – 3 points for a win was introduced and there were no ties. If a match ended tied, penalty shoot-out followed and the winner got 2 points, the loser – 1. That made the league tables a bit complicated to figure out, especially from the distance of time. As for the season, 5 teams in the top league were above the rest and more or less competed for the title. However, with top players steadily going abroad and general lack of great new talent coming, the long decline of Hungarian football was unchanged. Even the record transfer involving Lajos Detari could not hide the decline – yes, he was sold to Olympiakos (Piareus) for 12.5 million dollars, thus beating Maradona’s transfer to Napoli by 1.3 million dollars, but the price had nothing to do with general talent available in Hungary.
Second Division. Instead of one league of 20 teams, back to 2 groups of 16 teams each. The last 3 teams in each group were relegated. As usual, the former top-league teams were favourites, but really the only interesting thing in the new Second Division was the 3 teams from Debrecen playing in Group 1: usually, local derbies involved teams from Budapest, but now there was a provincial town having local derbies. Yet, Group 1 was dominated by one team – Group 2 was more exciting.
As for the teams… well, just a glimpse.
Nagykansza Olajbanyasz SE
Dorog – actually, Dorogi Banyasz.
Teams like that… nothing to brag about.
Szeged SC – or SZEOL – finished 2nd in Group 1. Unable to challenge the group leader, but also relatively unchallenged by others. Szeged had a chance to return to top flight, but in the promotion/relegation play-off they lost to Vasas (Budapest) 1-1 and 0-1. No promotion.
DMVSC – Debreceni MVSC – won easily Group 1 with 70 points (20 straight wins, 4 shoot-out wins, 2 shoot-out losses, and 4 straight losses, 54-18 goal-difference) – 8 points ahead of Szeged. They were the strongest club in Debrecen – Debreceni Kiniszi was in decline for a long time and DUSE (Debreceni Universitas SE) were modest little-known club, just happy to play Second Division football – and returned to the top division.
In Group 2 three teams fought for the top place and at the end goal-difference decided the winner.
Oroszlanyi Banyasz – or just Oroszlany – had great season, but was unlucky at the end: they finished with 62 points, but goal-difference (35-28) was against them and they took 2nd place. They also made a record 10 shoot-out wins – the only team with 2-digit number of game won by penalty shoot-out. Unfortunately, they lost the promotion/relegation play-off against Haladas VSE 2-0 and 1-4. Too bad… little known Oroszany had a good chance to reach the top league, but… no.
Csepel SC (Budapest) was lucky – they also finished with 62 points (18 straight wins, 3 shoot-out wins, 2 shoot-out losses, and 7 straight losses), but goal-difference was in their favour: 52-31. Thus, Csepel clinched first place in the group and was happily promoted back to First Division.
As a whole, former First Division members won Second Division and those with less or none top league experience failed.
A Football Blog