The 2027/2028 season is almost over, and it looks set to be the greatest of Shama Deadman’s career!
In the previous chapter, we saw Győr continue to beat the odds in their first season back in Hungary’s top division. As we head into the last few weeks, not only are they close to securing a top-four finish in the league… but they are also in contention to win the Magyar Kupa!
There’s still time for things to go horribly wrong, but can Győr hold their nerve and secure European football for next season? Let’s find out…
APRIL & MAY 2028: THE RUN-IN
So, here’s the situation. With seven games to go, Győr were 3rd in the NB I. Any fears of relegation were long gone, and now the aim was to finish our first season back in the top flight by qualifying for Europe.
Overhauling Ferencváros to win the title and a Champions League qualifying place was unlikely. A more realistic target was to finish in the top three, which would get us into the Europa Conference League qualifiers. We could also get an ECL berth by winning the Magyar Kupa, where we were set to face Kisvárda in the Semi Finals. If the Kupa winners had already qualified via the league, the 4th-placed team would get that ECL spot instead.
Our run-in began with a trip to Debrecen, who were in 4th place but would leapfrog us into 3rd if they won. We’d had a few bitter battles with ‘Loki’ before, and we were determined not to let them upset us again.
Though Debrecen made the brighter start, we managed to break the deadlock against the run of play after 17 minutes. The in-form Mario Bratu crossed from the right wing to striker Louie Barry, whose flick-on to the far post was tapped in by left-winger Nemanja Jović. Midfield destroyer Lars Dendoncker followed that up with a couple of goals, and we held a comfortable 3-0 lead at half-time!
But of course, Debrecen weren’t a team to be taken lightly, and when our defence dozed off early in the second half, they punished us with two quickfire goals. That made for a very anxious final half-hour, where we came close to losing our lead entirely before an injury-time Barry header finally put the game to rest!
Barry continued his fine form against Honvéd, slotting in a searching cross from Jović in the 16th minute. Honvéd quickly retaliated, but after a Dendoncker free-kick in the 22nd minute, we never looked back. Barry netted twice more to complete a first-half hat-trick, and we held a 4-1 advantage after scoring from all four shots on target!
But King Louie was not finished yet! At the start of the second half, he scored a FOURTH goal from an absolutely ludicrous angle to complete an emphatic 5-1 victory! 75 years after a Hungary team with seven Honvéd players famously destroyed England, now an Englishman was doing the same to Honvéd!
Barry had now scored 18 goals for Győr, including 14 in the league. Only one player had outscored him in Hungary’s top flight this season.
That man was Ujpest‘s 28-year-old Togolese international Kévin Denkey. We couldn’t afford allow a striker with his pace and finishing ability to break through our backline, so we sat deep and narrow to try and keep him quiet. It was still no use, as after just 10 minutes, Denkey ran onto a lethal long ball to break clear and fire home his 19th league goal of the campaign!
And that moment of magic was all ‘Lilák’ needed. Despite our best efforts, our counter-attacking game was no match for their relentless counter-pressing, and Barry was almost completely starved of service. After 16 matches unbeaten in all competitions, we fell to our first defeat since January.
That loss ended our slim title hopes, but we now needed just five points from our final four league games to guarantee 4th place at worst.
It didn’t take us long to bounce back, as we made a strong start to our Magyar Kupa Semi Final with Kisvárda. Defensive midfielder Gabor Tamás opened the scoring in the 15th minute of the first half, before Barry added another goal in the 15th minute of the second half.
With a 2-0 lead in the bag, we played some steady, conservative football in the final half-hour to stop our opponents scoring any away goals. At half-time in the tie, we looked to have one foot into the Final!
Before the second leg, we had an away game against Haladás, who were bravely battling relegation. I’m not sure what it is about Szombathely that turns our players’ legs to jelly, but we had another nightmare there.
Barry wasted two great chances in the opening seven minutes – firstly chipping a tame shot into the keeper’s hands, and then missing an open goal. Even when Louie did ‘score’ just before half-time, he was caught offside.
Even worse was to come at the end of the second half. Right-back Răzvan Onea stuck out a leg and tripped a Haladás player in our area, conceding a last-gasp penalty which goalkeeper George Kovács couldn’t save.
That was not the way to prepare for the second leg of our Semi Final. Leading 2-0 lead from our home leg, we knew how important it was to grab an early away goal at Kisvárda, who would need to score at least four times if we did. Unfortunately, the pressure got to us, and the hosts grew increasingly confident of a comeback.
After a few early chances went begging, Kisvárda eventually struck in the 36th minute, calmly passing the ball across our six-yard box before creating an easy tap-in. They then levelled the tie seven minutes into the second half, with a byline cross being headed home – again from close range.
We struggled to come out of our shell after losing our lead, and we were lucky to get through the rest of the 90 minutes before falling further behind. Our agony was not quite over, though, as 30 torturous, goalless minutes of extra-time followed before the tie was settled by penalties.
Strangely, on such a tense occasion, we actually relaxed a bit more – scoring our first three penalties while Kisvárda missed their first two. However, the home team managed to hold on, pulling it back from 3-0 to 3-3 after Onea fired wide our first chance to win the shoot-out.
Then up stepped Tamás, who’d taken on the captaincy after centre-half Balázs Hirman was substituted in the second half. If Gábor scored our fifth penalty, victory was ours. If not, sudden death beckoned.
TAMÁS, YOU BEAUTY! Győr were in their first Magyar Kupa Final for 15 years, and we would play…
…Újpest, who beat Fehérvár 3-0 on aggregate. Újpest had already qualified for the Europa Conference League, which meant that if they won the Final, the cup-winners’ ECL spot from would instead go to the 4th-placed team in the NB I. This was HUGE new for us!
Buoyed by our dramatic cup win, we got off to a fantastic start at Ferencváros. Barry rediscovered his scoring form, hitting two goals inside the first 14 minutes. Our opponents had not lost a single league game at home all season, so everybody at the Groupama Aréna – including myself – was stunned!
But then Ferencváros showed why they were about to seal a 10th consecutive Hungarian league title. Having pulled one goal back midway through the first half, ‘Fradi’ then gave us a battering in the second. Our defence valiantly held out for so long, but a painful 82nd-minute equaliser was followed by an even more agonising 95th-minute winner from the still-reigning champs!
We’d missed a chance to go back above Debrecen, but defeat for Kisvárda confirmed that we would finish no lower than 4th! And although it wasn’t official yet, we could now say it with confidence – in our first season back up, Győr had qualified for the Europa Conference League!
But after three straight defeats, all I wanted was for us to get another win on the board before the Kupa Final. Our best opportunity came in our final home match, against Mezőkövesd.
This was another frustrating game on the attacking front, as we spurned chance after chance – and had to rely on a couple of teenage substitutes to finally earn us the win in stoppage time. That breakthrough came when striker Dániel Juhász skilfully sidefooted a pass into the area for the very exciting winger Csaba Katona, who fired home his first league goal!
That result would’ve lifted us back up into 3rd if Ferencváros had managed to win as Debrecen. However, the champions got a taste of their own medicine, squandering a 2-0 lead of their own as ‘Loki’ fought back to win 3-2. You muppets!
To pip our rivals to the bronze medals, then, we would need to win our final match at Diósgyőr (who still had an outside chance of being relegated) – and hope that Debrecen couldn’t beat Mezőkövesd.
At first, we struggled to hold up our end of the deal. Diósgyőr opened the scoring from a corner in the 28th minute, and we needed a similar goal of our own – from centre-half Eduard Ciubotaru – to get back level before half-time.
During the interval, I decided to make an emotional change at left-wing. Katona was making only his second ever league start on his 17th birthday, but the rising star was struggling to make an impact. He was replaced with 19-year-old loanee Norbert László, who finally returned to action eight months after breaking his leg in August.
László clearly looked rusty, but his presence was perhaps enough to raise the team up. In the 76th minute, shortly after Diósgyőr had a goal disallowed, Barry got his head to a cross from left-back Simão Rocha and turned the match in our favour!
So we’d finished the league season with back-to-back wins… but had we done enough to finish 3rd?
YES, WE HAD! Debrecen had lost 2-1 at Mezőkövesd, which meant we snatched the bronze medals from under their noses! That serves them right for stealing two of our transfer target in the summer!
Now just one more match remained. After eight years as a manager, it was time to pick out my best suit for my first ever cup final!
2028 MAGYAR KUPA FINAL
Wednesday 17 May 2028. Győr had arrived at the Puskás Arena in Budapest, looking to win their first Magyar Kupa for nearly half a century.
If it was to be our day, we would need to upset an Újpest side who’d not lost any of our three league meetings this season. We had drawn two of them, though, and this was the starting line-up I believed could take us a step further:
I made three changes from the side who’d beaten Diósgyőr four days earlier. Stalwart right-back Attila Szabados got the nod ahead of Onea, while Jović was recalled on the left wing, and János Géringer replaced an injured Bratu on the right.
I also kept faith in Kovács, who’d started all our matches in the competition from Round 2 onwards. The young Romanian keeper was up against the league’s top scorer Denkey, but he made a strong save to keep out the Togolese’s first shot on target after just five minutes.
While Újpest started confidently, one of our first counter-attacks in the 13th minute caused them real problems. Jović cut inside from the left wing and drew a foul to win us a penalty, despite our opponents’ claims that the Bosnian dived. Barry then thundered home his 23rd goal of the season to break the deadlock!
The rest of the first half was a tense affair, but our defence did a fine job of shutting out Denkey, who couldn’t add to his 31 goals this term. As we carried a narrow 1-0 lead into the half-time break, we started to believe that our time had come….
…and it surely would’ve been had we scored from a great free-kick opportunity in the 49th minute. Géringer’s delivery from the right wing found Ciubotaru, who flicked it into the six-yard box, where Barry somehow nodded over!
I was still wondering how Louie had missed a gaping goal when Újpest hit us on the break barely a minute later. Rocha was having one of his worst games in a Győr jersey and couldn’t contain the Lilák right-back Viktor Rogan, whose cross was nodded in by his Serbian compatriot Stefan Mitrović from left-wing. 1-1.
Not long after that, I tried to re-energise our attack by replacing Jović with László, but now it was all one-way traffic. Újpest had their tails up, and though Denkey was finishing like a donkey, it wouldn’t be long until their greater quality showed.
After 73 minutes, a Rogan free-kick exposed the weaknesses in our central defenders. Captain Hirman was beaten to the set-piece by Újpest’s midfield destroyer Aboubakar Keïta, and Ciubotaru couldn’t intercept the flick-on, which Ecuador defender Jackson Porozo tapped in from close range.
We now had to go for broke. I switched to a 4-4-2 and brought on Nebo to partner Barry up top. Sadly, we were hugely weakened when Géringer – our liveliest attacking threat – hurt his back a few minutes later, leaving Onea to take his place for the closing stages.
Despite that, we continued to give it everything and fight until the end, even winning a corner just as stoppage time was about to expire. Unfortunately, our final attack was repelled by a resilient Újpest defence, who held on to complete their second-half fightback. The Kupa was not coming home to Győr.
Not quite the grand finale we were hoping for, but it was still a valiant effort against arguably the 2nd-best team in the country. We can look back on this cup run – and indeed our whole season – with huge pride. Now the 64,000 forint question is… can we follow it up?
(Out of interest, I’ve worked out that 64,000 Hungarian forint converted to Pounds sterling will give you… £153. That might be enough get you one of Louie Barry’s toenails.)
Phew! What a fantastic season – just a shame Győr couldn’t finish it with a trophy!
There will be another post on Friday, where we’ll take a deep dive into the epic 2027/2028 season and give it the full review it deserves. We will also find out what the future holds for Shama – does he stay at Győr for a European adventure, or is it time for him to pursue a bigger challenge elsewhere?
Thanks for reading!
Fuller FM 
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