Our club was also invited to the István Kocsis International Memorial Tournament in Csorna, held in memory of Csorna-born István Kocsis, a 20-time Hungary international who made almost 200 appearances for our club and died in 1994 at the age of 44.
At the 14-team U9 tournament, Martin Evanics’s players faced Ferencváros, Király SE, Gyirmót, Pápa, the Csornai KK representative side and Inter Bratislava in the group stage. Apart from the opening match, we won every game, keeping four clean sheets.
Our group-stage results:
Honvéd–Ferencváros 0–2
Honvéd–Király SE 1–0
Honvéd–Gyirmót 3–2
Honvéd–Pápa 4–0
Honvéd–Csornai KK representative side 6–0
Honvéd–Inter Bratislava 2–0
In the quarter-final we faced hosts Csorna, whom our team defeated 2–0 to reach the last four, where eventual winners FTC ended our run (0–2). In the bronze-medal match we came from behind to beat Inter Bratislava 3–1, meaning we finished in 3rd place at the prestigious youth tournament.
Alongside the bronze medal, two of our players were selected for this year’s All-Star team: Viktor Bódi-Szabó and Áron Kondisz , while Igor Zajos received the award for the tournament’s best goalkeeper.
Head coach Martin Evanics’s assessment:
“I am very satisfied with today and with the organisation of the tournament, as well as the quality of the pitch. It was fantastic that we could retreat into the shade throughout, or even into the building, because being able to keep the children refreshed continuously was a great help. We really enjoyed going straight from one match to the next, with no dead time between games – I wish every tournament were organised like this. We were able to play very good matches, including against international teams, so today was an excellent benchmark. The matches against Ferencváros are always the best because we meet them relatively often, and they always provide a measure of the direction we are heading in. Today again we produced excellent football against them. Congratulations to them on winning the tournament and to my boys, who fought and worked tremendously hard today. I am proud of them!
