ZTE will face Ferencváros in the Magyar Kupa final at the Puskás Arénában on Saturday, and coach Nuno Campos says the match will be the seventh final of his career. He called the game a rare chance for his players to step into a stage many of them may never reach again.
“A Fradi elleni Magyar Kupa-döntő lesz a hetedik finálém,” Campos said, adding that the players are the most important figures in the final. He told them that many may have only one cup final in their careers and should enjoy the moment.
The final gives Campos a familiar kind of pressure. He was a cup finalist as a player in 1999 with SC Campomaiorense, when it lost to Beira Mar, then won the Portuguese Cup with Braga in 2016 while working there as an assistant coach. Four years ago, he reached the Portuguese Cup final again with Tondela against Porto, a run he described as memorable because it was the club’s first appearance in that final.
Campos has built a reputation around knockout competitions because his final appearances have come in different roles, from player to assistant coach to head coach. Saturday’s match also lands at the end of a long season for ZTE, a very young squad that the source says has the lowest average age among top-flight teams in Europe.
That mix of inexperience and fatigue is part of the test at Puskas Arena. Campos is not asking his team to pretend the occasion is ordinary; he is asking them to treat it as the rare night it is, while he draws on a career that has already taken him to finals in 1999, 2016 and beyond.
