It’s time for another chapter from my Football Manager 2021 journeyman career, where Shama Deadman is having the time of his life in Hungary!
We’re midway through the 2028/2029 season, and Shama has led Győr to the top of the NB I. You can read more about how they got there in Part 36.
Much of Győr’s success so far this term has been down to a rock-solid defence – and perhaps the greatest goalkeeper to come out of Romania since Helmuth Duckadam! So… what could possibly go wrong?
MID-SEASON BREAK
The winter break didn’t come at a good time for us. We had just gone five points clear in the league after five consecutive victories, and part of me feared that we would struggle to maintain our momentum.
When the January transfer window opened, though, that was the least of my worries. Things were about to get a whole lot tougher…
Ladies and gentlemen… we’ve lost George Kovács. After 11 clean sheets in 14 games, our goalkeeping superhero has been poached!
[Sigh] Let me explain. Kovács’ initial contract had a £975,000 minimum fee release clause. We gave him a new £2,500-per-week deal in August to keep the vultures away, but George’s agent locked in a new release clause of £1.1million. I tried to remove that clause when we discussed another new contract in December, but she insisted on increasing it to just £1.3million – AND getting George another big pay rise.
I didn’t think it was financially smart to keep renewing my goalkeeper’s contract twice a year just to up his price by a few hundred grand each time, so I cancelled talks and hoped nobody would try to lure him away.
Vålerenga offered £1.1million first, but Kovács rejected them. Darmstadt were next to make a move, but again, he turned them down. Then, just as I thought he was sticking around… Bayer Leverkusen came knocking. George was loving life in Hungary, but he could hardly say no to a Bundesliga giant, could he?
Fortunately, I had a backup plan. After considering several goalkeepers to replace Kovács, I decided to sign Ferencváros’ backup gloveman Gergely Hutvágner. The 28-year-old isn’t quite as agile as George, but he is mentally tougher and a more imposing aerial threat.
Hutvágner is only here on loan, though, because I’ve already lined up a new long-term number 1. He’s a free transfer… and he comes from South America.
Chile Under-23s international Alexander Álvarez broke through at O’Higgins last year as a 17-year-old, but didn’t extend his contract with them. After having a quick look at his technical attributes, and then hearing that he was on Red Bull Salzburg’s radar, I thought, “This guy could be very special!” So I swooped in ahead of the Austrian giants, offered Alex a contract, then seal the deal once we’d done some proper scouting.
Because of EU rules and regulations, we cannot officially sign Álvarez until his 18th birthday in August. No worries, though, as we’ve taken him on trial, so he’ll train and play with our Under-19s squad before the big day! We’ve even signed another Chilean – a former O’Higgins team-mate, no less – to help him settle!
We first stumbled across Álvarez after Pablo Tapia was recommended to us. Pablo has plenty of promise himself, and while he’s naturally a centre-half, I actually see the tough-tackling 19-year-old as a defensive midfielder. He could even see some league action before the season’s done.
In other transfer business, former captain and striker Norbert Kundrák‘s loan deal at Gyirmót was made permanent after they paid us £50,000. We also loaned out a few more promising youngsters, including our highly-rated Slovakian winger Lukas Lesko, who will finish the season at Fehérvár as they fight relegation.
JANUARY 2029
There was some rustiness to shake off after the winter break, and though we won all our warm-up friendlies, none of them were convincing wins. Indeed, we even fell 1-0 down against third-division Lipót before a late surge saw us home.
Our NB I campaign resumed at Vasas, where Kovács said goodbye by helping us to a sixth straight league victory – but no clean sheet. Louie Barry‘s opener early in the second half was cancelled out before attacking midfielder László Toman restored our lead.
We didn’t look great in our Magyar Kupa Round 3 tie against second-tier DEAC either, but things clicked together in the second half as we eventually romped to a 5-0 win. The star of this show was 17-year-old winger Csaba Katona, who came off the bench and scored three goals in just six minutes for his first career hat-trick!
Unfortunately, the winning streak ended at Honvéd, despite Barry’s third goal in as many games giving us a slim half-time lead. We took some risks in the second half to try and kill our opponents off, but they hit back with some impressive high-tempo football and stole a 2-1 win late on.
That wasn’t the finest start to Hutvágner’s time at Győr, but our new goalie did later shut out an out-of-form Kisvárda side who’d won just once since we last played them in October. There was no win for us this time, though, as we could hardly string a counter-attack together and had to settle for a 0-0.
Though we still topped the table at the end of January, Újpest had cut our lead down from five points to just three. After three months at the summit, the pressure was heating up on us.
FEBRUARY 2029
February would put us through our toughest run so far, as we faced the rest of the top four, as well as a two-legged Kupa Round 4 tie against NB II high-flyers Puskás Akadémia. This gruelling five-game stretch in 14 days would tell us if we were genuine contenders… or mere pretenders.
First up: a home game against Újpest – the only team in the league I’d never beaten before. But that would soon change, as we stayed strong at the back before ex-Lilak winger Nemanja Jović struck this stunning volley early in the second half! We then held on for a priceless victory that sent us SIX points clear!
Our next big title clash… didn’t go so well. Ferencváros were out for revenge after we beat them in our last meeting, and their rapid play caught us by surprise as they went 2-0 up within seven minutes. It was all downhill from there, and we were desperately resorting to damage limitation by the end of a heavy 4-0 defeat.
We would soon have to face Ferencváros again in the Magyar Kupa Quarter Finals, having beaten Puskás Akadémia 2-0 on aggregate in the last 16. In truth, we were very wasteful over both legs, needing a late Lars Dendoncker winner in the first leg and an own goal in the second to win them. If we repeated those performances against Fradi, we would surely get another couple of thrashings.
Having scored just four goals in our last six games, it was clear that we needed more firepower to sustain a title charge. 18-year-old Dániel Juhász wasn’t ready to step forward regularly, so I sent him on loan to Dynamo Brest in Belarus, where he will hopefully sharpen up his game.
Taking Dániel’s place in the team was Kamil Antosiak, who arrived on loan from German third-division side Rostock. The 24-year-old Pole was quick, clinical, and masterful on the ball. Was he the last piece in the jigsaw?
Antosiak made an encouraging league debut when we beat Debrecen 2-0. After a goalless first half, we slowed the tempo a bit more to gradually break our visitors down. Defender Siniša Tanjga headed in the breakthrough goal in the 58th minute, and four minutes after that, Kamil set up Barry for what proved to be the match-clincher.
And then we produced probably the worst performance of my tenure. Barry and Antosiak were hopeless up front against lowly Fehérvár, whose wingers tore our defence apart either side of half-time. A 3-0 defeat was our first at ETO Park this season, in front of the biggest crowd of our season (nearly 6,000 spectators).
Újpest took full advantage of our slip, beating Debrecen 2-0 to close the gap to four points. With the title race tightening up, I wondered whether it was worth sacrificing our Magyar Kupa chances to focus on the league.
The first leg of our Quarter Final took place just two days later, having been moved forward due to Ferencváros‘ involvement in the Europa Conference League knockout rounds. I decided to field a mixture of reserves and youngsters in the first leg at the Groupama Aréna, and though Cyril Nebo got us off to a great start, Ferencváros eventually overwhelmed us and won 3-2.
MARCH 2029
March began with another defensive meltdown. Mezőkövesd went ahead twice, and though Nebo led a spirited comeback to put us 3-2 up, the hosts dealt us a long-range sucker punch with eight minutes to go. A 3-3 draw saw us drop more points to Újpest, who were now only two behind!
The youths and stiffs got another run-out in our Kupa Quarter Final rematch with Ferencváros. Though we created some very good chances, Antosiak and Katona couldn’t take them. Our opponents were much lethal, scoring twice in the second half to complete a 6-2 aggregate win and advance to the Semi Finals.
We were now on our worst run of form this season – 12 goals conceded in four consecutive winless matches. To put that into context, we had conceded the same number of goals in our previous 21 games before the Fehérvár thrashing!
After a sharp dip in form, captain Balázs Hirman led by example to get us back on track against Gyirmót. The centre-half scored the first goal after 18 minutes, and despite a few wobbles late in the first half, Toman and Jović eventually completed a solid 3-0 away win.
Barry then earned us a 1-0 home win over Diósgyőr, though we should’ve won much more comfortably after the visitors had a red card in the second half (a reckless two-footed challenge from aptly-named midfielder Máté Ágh!). Indeed, they would’ve equalised from a late counter-attack if an offside flag hadn’t saved us!
Our next home performance was much better – a 5-0 thrashing over ten-man Vasas that was very much all about Katona! Csaba got one goal, two assists AND won us a penalty from right-wing, while Nebo also impressed after coming off the bench to score twice.
While we’d hit form again, it was Újpest who were now feeling the heat, with a home loss to Mezőkövesd seeing them fall five points behind! And as for Ferencváros…
…their run of 10 consecutive titles was over, and despite a fantastic run to the ECL’s latter stages, so was Attila Supka’s tenure as manager! ‘Fradi’ even had the nerve to offer me his job! Nice try, fellas!
YOUTH UPDATE: THEN AND NOW
I’m going to finish this chapter with a look at how our hottest youth prospects have developed over the years. I will be focussing on four players: a couple of success stories, and a couple who have been… less successful.
Let’s start with the jewel in our youth crown: Csaba Katona. The winger has blossomed since emerging in our 2027 youth intake and is now very much part of the senior set-up. Csaba’s six-minute hat-trick in the Magyar Kupa – and his dominant display in our last league game with Vasas – have shown us what he is capable of.
I mainly used inverted wingers in my tactics and thought that Katona’s technique and athleticism would be best used cutting inside from the left. However, I’ve actually been using him quite often as an out-and-out right-winger. This has added some much-needed width and energy to an attack that has grown stale lately.
Katona’s emergence completely overshadowed another promising winger who was in our 2026 intake – Róbert Nagy. Remember him?
‘Bob’ got a few first-team chances early in our 2026/2027 promotion season, and he actually did reasonably well. But then he went back to the Under-18s… and basically stopped improving. He’s now out on loan at Ménfőcsanak in the third division, where he hasn’t played well at all.
Also in the class of ’26 was midfielder Roland Boros. He didn’t look amazing at the time, but a professional attitude to training saw him improve pretty quickly, and I’ve gradually given him more first-team opportunities over the years.
These days, Roland is a hard-working ball-winner who produces solid match ratings in the high 6s to low 7s. However, he has struggled to hold down a starting place, and his development has slowed in recent months. He needs to play week in, week out to keep improving, and is a prime candidate to be loaned out next season – ideally to a top-half NB II club.
And then we come to Dániel Juhász. I bought the pacey striker from Iváncsa in 2026, and after scoring five goals in his first 10 games, the future looked bright. Unfortunately, a combination of various injuries – and the team progressing far quicker than expected – have stalled Dániel’s progress. Indeed, he has has arguably regressed on his technical and physical attributes.
Dániel reached a crossroads earlier this season. He was far too good for reserve and youth football, where he could score hat-tricks while sleepwalking, but he hadn’t developed enough to challenge for a first-team place. I hope a year in Belarus – ideally free of any long-term injuries – will really kickstart his career.
Meanwhile, our latest youth intake delivered a few reasonable prospects. Remember: those star ratings are in comparison to our first-team. Someone with 3.5* potential could reach a similar level to someone like Antosiak… not that Kamil’s been particularly good for us since he arrived, but I digress.
Unfortunately for Csanád Balint, we already have a couple of gifted attacking midfielders in the Under-18s, so his future might be in a slightly deeper role. Adrián Mayer is a quick striker with a decent work rate, so he might have a more promising future if he can up his determination.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned on Twitter that I was only going to post THREE updates per season from now on, instead of the usual four. Well… the best-laid plans and all that! This season has been SO crazy that I’m afraid it will have to run on for a little bit longer!
So, please join me again on Friday, when the 2028/2029 season finally reaches its conclusion! Can Győr hold off Újpest and become the new champions of Hungary?
Thanks for reading!
Fuller FM 
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