Thursday, March 27, 2014

Badge of the Day #93 (Vörös Lobogó)

 


Following the celebration yesterday of the centenary of MTK(-VM) Budapest, today’s very latest addition to the collection commemorates the name of Vörös Lobogó, the ‘Red Flag’ under which MTK flew from 1953 – 56, during which time, as domestic league champions, they became the first Hungarian club to compete in the new European Cup, in the 1955 – 56 season, thrashing Anderlecht by an aggregate of 10 – 4 before going out at the quarter-final stage, in another goalfest, losing 6 – 8 overall to subsequently beaten finalists Stade de Reims.

Thus this object is of a particularly desirable vintage, for all that it lacks the traditional ‘MTK’ name, fixed as it is in the specific historical time of not only the exciting birth of pan-European football club competition but also immediately pre-Revolution communist Hungary (MTK had fallen under the post-war control of the state security police, & ‘Vörös Lobogó’ was one of a swift succession of name changes officially-imposed upon the club: for all that it seemed a more exotic & ‘Hungarian’ name, &, from recollection, an attraction from the earliest days of one’s Euro-fixation, its less edifying associations can be appreciated), rich, then, in its ‘hauntological’ aspect.



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