Csepel

Csepel is Budapest's XXI district, an island in the Danube built up around heavy industry — for decades the name meant the Weisz Manfréd works, a steel and manufacturing complex that shaped the district and, at several points, supplied its football club's name. The team wore that imprint literally, playing through the twentieth century as Weisz Manfréd FC Csepel and later Csepeli Vasas, tied at each stage to the factory or the workers' union running it. The current club traces back to 27 January 1912, when local amateur groups merged into Csepeli Testedzők Köre.

The best years ran through the 1940s and into 1959: Hungarian championships in 1942, 1943, 1948 and 1959, with bronze medals in 1944, 1945 and 1946. Zoltán Czibor, later a forward in Hungary's Aranycsapat generation, wore Csepel's colours briefly in 1951 and 1952; a statue of him now stands at the club's ground. Károly Fáter, Olympic champion in goal in 1968, and József Tóth II, who took World Cup silver in 1954, both came up through the same island club.

European football arrived later and briefly, with a Mitropa Cup final lost to Tatran Prešov in 1981 and a Magyar Kupa final in 1976. Home matches are played at the Béke téri Stadion, where 34,000 people packed in for a game in 1948 — a crowd the ground, reduced to a fraction of that capacity today, has no realistic prospect of matching. Csepel play in azure blue and cherry red, carrying the nickname Island Menace after their patch of Danube land.

The football section of the old club folded in 2002. The Csepel FC now on the pitch reformed between 2004 and 2006 and has since worked its way through Hungary's lower divisions, well removed from the championship years but still representing the island.