Diósgyőri VTK

Miskolc is a steel town, and for decades Diósgyőri VTK was the works team of the Diósgyőr ironworks — a rivalry with the region runs deeper than any single fixture, but the club's identity was forged against the capital clubs, Ferencváros chief among them, who beat DVTK 6-2 in the 1942 cup final and have stood on the other side of the country's football map ever since, Budapest against the provinces.

The works founded the club on 6 February 1910, workers and students from the Diósgyőri Vasgyár factory giving it a name that translates roughly as the Ironworks Physical Exercise Circle. It has carried half a dozen names since — Diósgyőri MÁVAG SC under wartime ownership, Diósgyőri Vasas through the 1950s, spells as Diósgyőri FC and DVTK 1910 — before settling on Diósgyőri VTK in 2008.

The best of it came in the late 1970s. József Salamon spent fifteen years in the side and still holds the club record for top-flight appearances, 375 of them, and in September 1979 five Diósgyőr players were named for Hungary in the same match — a mark of how far a provincial club had reached. The Hungarian Cup came to Miskolc twice in that era, in 1976-77 and again in 1979-80, and third place in the 1978-79 league season remains the club's highest league finish. A league cup followed much later, in 2013-14, the same season DVTK lost the domestic cup final again.

Goalkeeper György Veréb outlasted all of it, making 802 appearances between 1968 and 1998, three decades in one goal at a club that kept producing players for the national side without ever keeping the biggest of them for long — Tamás Kádár returned from Newcastle for two seasons, Vladimir Koman stayed one.

What Diósgyőri VTK has never done is win the Hungarian league. Third in 1978-79 stands as the closest it has come, and the championship remains the one line missing from a history otherwise built on cup finals, factory loyalty and a stadium in Diósgyőr that still fills for the visits from Budapest.