Five interesting factors ahead of the cup final with Honved

We take this chance to look at five interesting aspects ahead of the big Cup Final on Saturday. 

CUP FINAL EXPERIENCE
Vidi have played in five cup finals previously: They were in 1982, 2001, 2006, 2011 and in 2015. With the exception of the first final, there are current members of either the playing squad or the coaching staff that have connections to those earlier finals. Coach Tamas Szalai was a player back in 2001 in the final against Debrecen. Current physio Tibor Debreceni was doing the same job back in the 2006 Hungarian Cup final as well as Dr Tibor Kovacs. The pair were also staff members in both the 2011 and 2015 finals. Tomas Tujvel was a squad member in the 2011 final while Akos Elek played the 90 minutes of the final with Kecskemet. The most recent final was in 2015 and current squad players Vinicius, Kovacs, Stopira and Juhasz all featured. Technical director Szabolcs Panczel was also involved back then as was kitman Robert Lakatos. Goalkeeping coach Istvan Brockhauser twice won the Hungarian Cup with Honved. 

KEEPER DOUBT AT HONVED
Keeper David Grof has been number one at Honved for the last two and a half years. He has kept goal in all league and European games. However, second choice keeper Andras Horvath has been in between the posts for the 9 matches in the 2018/19 Hungarian Cup run. That has put a question mark over who will appear in goal for the final. The situation is further complicated by the fact that David Grof looks like continuing his career elsewhere following the final. 

UNBEATEN SINCE 2017
Honved won the league title back in 2017 after defeating Vidi in the final game of that season. Vidi have gone on to win all the matches since then with the exception of a 1-1 draw back in September 2017. That has seen five league games that have ended in wins, which include last spring's match on the 27th May, exactly a day to the final match of 2017, when Vidi secured their third league title by winning the NB I in 2017-18. This season has seen wins in August when goals from Kovacs, Huszti and Hadzic cancelled out Batik's goal for Honved. Then the teams met again at the MOL Arena Sosto in the beginning of December. That game ended with goals from Juhasz and Scepovic. The most recent match was this April when a Szabolc Huszti header earned an 89th minute win. 

TOP GOALSCORERS
Budapest Honved have a rarely seen series when it comes to goalscorers. The Kispest side had Marton Eppel in 2016-17, Davide Lanzafame in 2017.18 and Filip Holender 2018-19 all end up becoming top goalscorer in the OTP league. This season's Hungarian Cup has two player with six goals to their names: They are former FTC player Kjartan Finnbogason, who left in the winter and David N'Gog. Vidi's Szabolcs Huszti has scored 4 goals with Futacs, Hodzic, Scepovic and Milanov all finding the back of the net during the run to this years final. 

EXPERIENCE STARTING PLAYERS
Vidi and Honved have several experienced players in their squads. These players tend not to have been rotated and are generally in the starting line-up. We have 36 year old Szabolcs Huszti and another player who will turn 36 in July, Roland Juhasz. Honved have 35 year old Kamber Djordje and Ivan Lovric at 33, with Danilo one year younger. The two managers, Marko Nikolic and Attila Supka set records in 2018-19 by fielding the most "senior" sides on average over the last 15 years. Vidi played a game back on the 30th September against DVTK, which included Tujvel, Juhasz, Huszti in the line up to make the average of the team 30,4 years old. Honved did similarly recently on the 4th May with 6 players over the age of 30. They were Grof, Lovric, Kamber, Heffler, Ben Hatira and Danilo.