On Thursday night Ferencváros (FTC) won at Újpest (UTE) 5-3 to complete the field for the Hungarian Cup. Before we continue about the field of teams and who they got here one has to take a step back and look at this creature of a tournament called the Hungarian Cup that seems to have a different life every season. In the past there were times when the Hungarian Cup was played during the holiday break and only the top flight Hungarian teams played in it. There were times when the cup was competed for after the MOL League and before the separate Hungarian championship season. The structure of the tournament has varied as well. At one time it was a round robin tournament and sometimes the teams were seeded and they played a straight knock out bracket. Last season ÚTE played a sort of “play-in” game against a team from the Hungarian 2nd division. Now that we have come full circle this year the competition has a Final 4 set up which will be all played in one weekend.
Three teams automatically made it to the finals, Dunaújváros (DAB), Székesfehérvár and Miskolc, with ÚTE, FTC and Debrecen playing a round robin qualifying group stage. Debrecen is a team from the 2nd division but there are rumors that they may move up to the top flight and compete in the 2013-14 MOL League season. Debrecen hosted both ÚTE and FTC, losing to the first one 3-2 in a shootout and then handily being 6-1 by the second one, so there for with two wins FTC will play at Miskolc for a chance to play for the Cup and Székesfehérvár will play at DAB in the other semifinals.
Hungarian Cup Final 4 (Frozen 4) Schedule
Semi Finals: March 27th Wednesday 18:00 Miskolc-FTC
19:00 DAB-Székesfehérvár
3rd place match: March 28th Thursday 16:30 in Miskolc
Championship match 19:30