As we reported earlier, our U16 team finished the elite league with a silver medal and, shortly afterwards, won an international tournament in Spain featuring 80 teams. The field included Atlético Madrid, Getafe, Elche, Osasuna, Real Oviedo and Portuguese side Braga, among others.
“The players prepared very seriously for the tournament and had been looking forward to it for a long time, so they took to the pitch with even greater intensity. The first match was very difficult, but even then I felt this tournament was going to be a little different. In the group stage we faced teams roughly equivalent to the middle of the Hungarian league. Much tougher opponents awaited us in the knockout stage, but we handled the key phases of the matches extremely well – both against Osasuna and in the final. Alongside quality football, we scored some beautiful goals and saw outstanding individual performances. It was fantastic to experience and to see that the boys are capable of playing football at such a high level.” – recalled our U16 head coach, István Körtvélyesi.
Our team completed the tournament without conceding a goal, while several outstanding individual performances also made the success memorable: Martin Vérten contributed ten goals to the triumph, while Dávid Czinki was named the best goalkeeper of the tournament.
“It was a great honour to play against teams like these, because we are talking about clubs with great traditions that everyone in the football world knows. It was a strong field, but we overcame the challenges successfully: we stayed focused throughout the matches and gave it everything. We prepared one game at a time, with the mindset that each one could be our final match of the season. It is difficult to be named the best goalkeeper at an eighty-team tournament, especially when you do not concede a single goal. It was a huge honour for me, and I felt incredibly proud when I received the award.”
