By Jaroslaw Adamowski
March 3 – Budapest Honved has announced plans to build a new stadium in the Little Pest district of Hungary’s capital. The football club will receive funds for the investment under a 40 billion forint (€128.6 million) government programme to modernise and expand 27 football stadiums by 2016.
“I think that the new stadium will be completed by the end of 2015,” George F. Hemingway, the club’s owner, told local news agency MTI.
The multi-purpose facility, built on the grounds of Honved’s Bozsik Jozsef stadium, will have a seating capacity of between 8,000 and 9,000. The club’s current stadium has a combined capacity of 10,000, including 6,000 seats and 4,000 standing places.
Under an agreement signed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Sandor Csanyi, head of the Hungarian Football Federation (MLSZ), the programme was launched in 2013. The funds will be made available to clubs playing in the Nemzeti Bajnoksag I and Nemzeti Bajnoksag II, the top two tiers of Hungary’s professional football league.
Of the 27 stadiums, four facilities are to be fitted with a seating capacity of between 8,000 and 14,000, and a further four or five stadiums with a seating capacity of between 6,000 and 8,000.
Set up in 1909, Honved’s achievements included 13 Hungarian championships between 1950 and 1993, and seven Cups of Hungary between 1926 and 2009.
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