Five interesting factors ahead of the big game with Ujpest

MOL Vidi FC entertain Ujpest FC on Saturday evening at the MOL Arena Sosto.

MOL Vidi FC face Ujpest FC at the MOL Arena Sosto on Saturday evening with a kick off at 19:30pm. Vidi go into the match in second place against current third placed Ujpest. We take a look at 5 interesting factors leading up to the big game. 

Stopira and Istvan Kovács: 2000

Our Cape Verdien left back and our midfielder could reach their 2000th minute against Ujpest, which is more than 22 full games during the current 2018-19 OTP League season. Three players have already reached that number with Nego, Juhasz and Kovacsik having already played that much in the league. It would be even higher if you would add the European matches....

Nikolov and Ristevski eye to eye

It is naturally a normal thing that two Hungarian internationals play against each other in the NB I. However, it becomes really interesting when this applies to two players from another country on opposing sides. North Macedonian player Boban Nikolov and Ujpest's Kire Ristevski could both be on the pitch on Saturday. The pair represented their country during the recent international break. Boban played 180 minutes while the latter played 71 and 93 minutes respectivelly. 

Dangerous second half

Ujpest have scored 35 goals so far in the OTP league. That may not appear too much for a team in third place. The lilacs have scored 11 goals with Haladas on 6 and Puskas Academy with 10 in the first half of matches. However, it is a different story for the second 45 minutes. Ujpest have found the back of the net 24 times, which compared to Ferencvaros (28) and joint with Mezokovesd for second spot. Ujpest are also very dangerous when it comes to coming from behind to turn games around. They have achieved this in 12 matches this season. 

Penalty, Penalty, Penalty

Ujpest were awarded just one penalty from the first 24 games of the season during the current OTP league campaign. That was missed by Soma Novothny, who has since left the club. However, they have scored in three consecutive matches from the penalty spot. All three were converted by Lacina Traore. Two went to the bottom left corner with the other going in the bottom right. 

Sankovic, the "invisible key player"

25 year old Bojan Sankovic is perhaps not the most talked about player for Ujpest. It is enough to think about Traore, Zsoter or Obinna. However, he is regarded as a key player. Manager Nebojsa Vignjevic has played the Croatian-Montenegro player in 27 of the 27 matches as a starting member. The defensive midfielder has been substituted three times. That means that he has missed just 45 minutes of the season to put him behind David Grof (Honved), Denes Dibusz (FTC) and Loic Nego. Sankovic has not scored or provided an assist but InStat rates him at 257, which is the highest of an Ujpest player.

Author: David Rechnitzer

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