Puskás Akadémia

In May 2018 a Hungarian side from a village of a couple of thousand people beat Flamengo. Puskás Akadémia had been in the top flight barely a season.

Felcsút sits in Fejér county, southwest of Budapest, and the club exists because an academy was built there in 2005 — a training operation first, a competitive team second.

What they play in is unlike anything else in Hungarian football. The Pancho Aréna, opened in 2014, was designed by Imre Makovecz and cost around 12 million euros; the roof is timber, curved and exposed. It holds 3,816.

The run of medals belongs largely to Zsolt Hornyák, in charge from 2019. He took the club into Europe and turned a promoted side into one that finished third in 2020, second in 2021, then third again in 2022 and 2024, and second once more in 2025. Before any of that came the closest thing to a trophy: the 2018 Magyar Kupa final, lost to Újpest on penalties.

Artem Favorov, the Ukrainian midfielder, arrived in 2020 and stayed six years, which in a squad built around imported players and academy graduates made him something like the constant.

The fixtures that carry weight are the ones against the clubs Puskás have been chasing at the top of the table — rangadó in Hungarian, and earned by proximity in the standings rather than by geography or any long history between them.