Oszkar Vilagi watches pensively from his
VIP box. Five years after buying FC DAC,
his club are playing the biggest game in
their history.
Their €14 million academy is open and
a €29m stadium renovation is complete.
A pig was slaughtered that morning and
made into sausages at a pre-game fan-
fest. Supporters have travelled from
Budapest and Hungarian triple Olympic
swimming gold-medallist Katinka Hosszu
takes the ceremonial kick-off.
As the national anthem of Hungary
rings out, Hungary’s third-most-popular
team begin their first game since the
winter break.
However, DAC are not Hungarian. They
are from Dunajska Streda in southern
Slovakia, which was part of Hungary until
the end of World War Two. Around 10
per cent of Slovakians speak Hungarian,mostly in the Zitny Ostrov region, where
Dunajska Streda is the biggest town and
FC DAC 1904 Dunajska Streda are the
locals’ pride and joy.
Only 22,000 people live in Dunajska
Streda, but a crowd of 12,135 watch DAC
take on Slovan Bratislava in February in
a top-of-the table clash.
Slovan are the establishment side
and the only team from the former
Czechoslovakia to win a European
title, beating Barcelona in the 1969
Cup-winners Cup Final. Apart from
the 1987 Czechoslovak Cup, DAC
have not won any major silverware,
yet with an average attendance of
7,500 they are Slovakia’s most
popular club. Among Hungarians,
only the national team and
Ferencvaros attract more support.
A regular spectator at DAC –
though he is absent for the Slovan
game – is Hungary’s prime minister,
Viktor Orban, who more than any
European leader knows how to use
football to cement a popular power base.
According to investigative news
website Atlatszo, by next year Orban’s
government will have built or renovated
at least 32 football stadiums at a cost
of €709m to the Hungarian taxpayer.
And that spending does not stop at
national borders.
Atlatszo has discovered that his
government is funding a swathe of
football clubs in Hungarian-speakingregions in the neighbouring countries
of Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine,
Slovenia and Slovakia, with the money
coming through the Hungarian Football
Federation and the Bethlen Gabor
Fund, a state body used to aid ethnic
Hungarians living elsewhere.
DAC have received €7.4m, and while
details of the funding shocked some in
Hungary, few were surprised in Dunajska
Streda, where Vilagi is a long-time friend
of Orban.
Vilagi was born in Dunajska Streda,
and after training as a lawyer he
went into politics before investing in
businesses: from shops and the town’s
hotel – which was DAC’s headquarters
until the new stadium opened – to the
oil-refinery business Slovnaft.
In 2002, Hungarian energy giant
MOL took a majority stake in SlovnaftCrunch game...DAC prepare to
take on Slovan BratislavaOwner...DAC’s
Oszkar Vilagi“We want to be in the
first three every year
and in international
competitions, but the
players here need to
have ambition to play
at a big club. Our club
is a bridge to the big
clubs”
DAC owner Oszkar Vilagi