RUNAWAY CHAMPIONS, BUT STILL NO FANS

Ferencvaros supporters boycott title party – to watch the reserves

When Ferencvaros coasted to their first Hungarian title in 12 years, they’d hoped for a bit of a party atmosphere in the next match at their shiny new home.

Instead their 23,700-capacity stadium was less than a third full, thanks to a two-year stand-off with the club’s most ardent supporters. The reason? Ferencvaros want to scan their veins when they enter the ground, of course. Fans refused to set foot inside the Groupama Arena, opened in 2014, when plans were unveiled for an innovative new biometric turnstile system.

The scanning system identifies each supporter by recording five million data points on the veins in the palm of their hand. It left a lot of fans claiming an infringement of privacy rights, with Ferencvaros’ ultras opting to boycott until further notice. “I’m sometimes invited to the VIP tribune but a lot of my friends boycott, so I stay in solidarity with them,” says supporter Balazs Tolnay.

Bizarrely, it hasn’t stopped the Green Eagles’ fans from cheering on Hungary at the same venue, as the vein scanner is turned off for internationals.

When Ferencvaros are at home, fans watch the matches on big screens, and recently they turned up en masse to

cheer on the reserves. A total of 10,000 fans watched the B team, on the same day that fewer than 5,000 were inside the Groupama Arena. “The supporters created a fantastic atmosphere, something that is very much missing from the arena,” says former Ferencvaros star Janos Hrutka.

The palm-scanning system is now set to be assessed by the Hungarian courts. Unable to persuade their club to scrap it, supporters felt they had to – ahem – take the law into their own hands.