MOL Hungarian Cup: leading clubs safely over first hurdle

At the end of July, MOL announced that it would join the 111-year-old Hungarian Cup as its naming sponsor, it therefore becoming known as the MOL Hungarian Cup for five years from the 2020/2021 season. With the sponsorship, the men's Hungarian Cup is now completely different to its previous guises; thanks to the support of MOL, the image of the cup will be reinvigorated and the structure reorganised so that as many teams as possible could compete and the journey to the Puskás Aréna would be as exciting as possible.

A total of 480 teams from all over the country entered this year’s competition, the majority starting to play in countywide qualifiers as early as the beginning of August, from which 47 teams eventually made it to the first round proper. There, they were joined by 49 national third-tier clubs, 20 Merkantil Bank Liga teams and 12 OTP Bank Liga outfits in comprising the 128 teams who would dou battle in round 6.

Of the 47 county-level teams, 46 came from the county's top divisions, only Ráckeve VAFC making it this far from an even lower level, Pest county's second tier.

Ráckeve, boasting former Hungary international striker Krisztián Kenesei, went toe to toe with Hungarian league champions Ferencváros for a good portion of the match, a task made slightly easier by the fact that none of the Fradi squad due to play in Thursday's Champions League qualifier featured. Nevertheless, Serhiy Rebrov's side eventually showed their class by scoring six goals, but Ráckeve scored a satisfying consolation goal late on to make the final result 6-1 to the visitors.

In Saturday's matches, several favourites progressed to the next round in emphatic style, ZTE scoring 11 goals in Mezőkeresztes, Kisvárda 10 in Kecskéd and Csákvár also 10 in Szarvaskend. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Paks were made to sweat the most, the scoreline reading 1-1 in the 70th minute before the Tolna-county team scored twice in the final twenty minutes to ease through 3-1 away at FC Hatvan.

Due to the current pandemic situation, health protection precautions were in force for the MOL Hungarian Cup too, so for example, testing was mandatory for all lower-class teams before their matches in this first round to include all the country's professional clubs. Following the testing procedure, it turned out that the coronavirus pandemic would unfortunately affect the schedule, the matches between Tiszafüred and Putnok, Iváncsa and Újpest, Lőrinc and Nyíregyháza Spartacus, Balassagyarmat and DVTK, Toponár and Puskás Akadémia, Szeghalom and Szolnok, and Veszprém and Szeged all being postponed.

Here is the link to all round 6's results: https://adatbank.mlsz.hu/league/54/0/22652/6