Stars on the field of Bük
Sport has always played a key role in the life of Bük, so it is no wonder that in 1996 the village of Vas was awarded the title of Sports City of the Nation. The local sports life and the constantly evolving infrastructure have had a particularly positive effect on the appearance of “stars” in the spa town.
Perhaps the first real name was attracted to the local outstanding football, the later seven-time Hungarian champion and sixteen-time Hungarian national team Leandro was confirmed at the age of 18 to the team of Büki TK – Spa Hunguest Hotels, which had big plans. The thin-balled midfielder’s journey then led to the county seat, then to the Debrecen and Ferencváros teams, where he could already make his appearance in the Champions League, against Liverpool and Fiorentina, among others.
If you already have star teams and Italy, let our next “victim” be the guard of the one-time Italian champion Sampdoria, who enjoyed the hospitality of Vas in 2013. On a hot August evening, Samp, which knew several Italian national teams, arrived in Bük, and after landing the plane carrying the team in Vienna, a bus transported the twenty-nine players and the sixteen escorts to the spa in western Hungary. The band Serie A has been training camp in Hungary for a whole week, and to their great surprise they suffered a 2-1 defeat at the Home of Progress during the guest performance. The biggest star of the Italians was undoubtedly one of the biggest icons of the club, the 22-time national team Angelo Palombo, who was willing to stand in the mud against the heightened interest of the fans and the Hungarian media.
Our virtual trip takes us to another Mediterranean country, where the Getafe team decided to head to Bükfürdő for the duration of a 10-day training camp. In the summer of 2005, the Spaniards arrived in Hungary as a rookie – in their first season of La Liga, they successfully fought to stay inside. During the more than one and a half weeks of league preparation, in addition to two hours of practice twice a day, four training matches were played against NB1 edge teams. The Andalusian master was the world-famous German football scandal hero Bernd Schuster, who did not receive an invitation to the German national team in 1990 when he became world champion due to his behavioral problems and his disagreements over Franz Beckenbauer.
After the training camp, the framework of Getafe was thoroughly strengthened, and this, combined with the fresh air from Bük, flew the team to the 9th place in the next point hunt.
Of course, not only was the Bük football stadium a popular target for club teams, but national teams also came to kick the skin in Vas. Many men’s and women’s youth guards may have deepened their sports knowledge on the banks of the Rapeseed, but perhaps the strangest and most outstanding of the Hungarian national teams was. The national eleven, led by Károly Nemcsák, had a great friendship with the leaders of the settlement and the Spa, so he visited the city countless times and played full house matches. The framework was strengthened by such famous “players” as Károly Eperjes, Árpád Besenczi, Jr. Kálmán Mészöly, József Szendrei, Dezső Straub, Gyula Vikidál, or Miklós Varga.
The success story, written twenty years ago, has reached its maximum goal of promoting the Olympic idea. The merger of Bükfürdő and the Halmay Cup faithfully reflects the principles of the five-ring games and also introduced the idea of Couberten in the spa town of Vas, which has been a great host and organizer of the competition throughout. Perhaps there is no other settlement in the country that boasts as many Olympic champions as Bükfürdő.
