2016. 01. 25..

Following last year’s victory in Croatia, the Hungarian Colas team arrived as the reigning champions to the second CED football tournament organised by our Slovakian colleagues.

One of the Group’s Slovakian subsidiaries, Cesty Nitra, organised the second Colas Central European football tournament in Žilina on 25 January 2016. We chose to send our squad that triumphed at last year’s NIF Cup and the first CED tournament, held in Varaždin.

Following last year’s modest number of participants in Croatia, the 2016 competition saw teams take the pitch from Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic, as well as two squads from the host nation and one formed by employees of the Central European Directorate – making Romania the only nation absent amid the Central European region. As all matches were played within a single day, our co-workers had to push themselves through eight taxing clashes in quick succession, which proved to be a rather exhausting task. The Croatian, Slovenian, Polish, and Hungarian teams were familiar with each other from the 2015 event, which probably helped us to overcome the others. The team of the Central European Directorate and the two teams from the Colas Slovakian subsidiaries – ISK and Cesty Nitra – were no match for our players. Similarly, the Austrians had no edge over us, as they went on to finish last in the tournament. CED’s squad finished in eighth place behind our colleagues from Slovenia, and Poland’s performance was enough to come in sixth. The Slovakian ISK team clinched fifth place, the Croatians just missed the podium with the fourth spot, and the Slovakian hosts, Cesty Nitra, took the bronze medal home. The first and second places were decided between the Czech and Hungarian sides. As neither of us lost any points, and we played a draw against each other, the final victory depended on the better goal difference – just like at last year’s NIF cup. The Hungarians finished with 41 scored and 12 conceded goals, but the Czechs fared even better, scoring 50 and conceding only 6 goals, thus winning the tournament.

We would like to congratulate our squad for the silver medal: Gábor Gulyás, Ivonig Corfmat, Gergő Kelemen, Botond Kertész, László Kiss, István Lechner, Gábor Orosz, Péter Rubus, Zsolt Szentgyörgyi, Ádám Tamás, Tamás Tóth.

We hope we’ll have another chance to match ourselves up against other Colas Central European countries next year!