Understanding How We Are Building the ZTE of the Future
From the outside, the decisions of a football club are often visible only through their outcomes. Who arrived, who left, who made the starting eleven, how many Hungarian players are on the pitch, what the club spends its money on and, of course, how many points the team collected at the weekend. We want ZTE supporters to see more than that. This is why we are launching OPEN ZTE.
Over the past months, we have heard many questions, criticisms and opinions about the direction the club is taking. That is natural. ZTE matters to people, and when something matters to us, we want to understand what is happening to it.
We do not expect our supporters to agree with every decision we make. At a football club, that would probably be impossible anyway.
What we do want is for everyone to have access to the information that allows them to understand why we make these decisions.
We have nothing to hide.
OPEN ZTE is therefore not a single statement. It is an approach. We want to continuously share the economic, sporting and strategic realities that shape the way our club operates and the decisions we make.
Alongside the publication of the OPEN ZTE manifesto, we are also releasing the first episode of the Megmondók Exclusive podcast, where we go much deeper into these questions. Horváth Csenger and our cup-winning former captain, Kálnoki-Kis Dávid, sit down with Berta Csaba, Managing Director of ZTE FC Zrt. The purpose of the conversation is not simply to present the club’s position: Csenger and Dávid ask questions, debate and challenge the thinking behind our decisions, raising the same questions that our supporters may have themselves.
The podcast takes a detailed look at ZTE’s financial model, the role of player sales, our recruitment and player development strategy, the future of the academy, and how we aim to align the sometimes seemingly conflicting interests of a football club, a community and a sustainably operated business.
For those who want to go beyond the numbers and principles and gain a deeper understanding of how ZTE operates today, the problems we are trying to solve and why we have chosen this path, we also recommend the first episode of Megmondók Exclusive.
Because our responsibility is not simply to win the next match.
Our responsibility is to make sure that ZTE still exists in ten, twenty and fifty years.
We Are a Club, a Community and a Business at the Same Time
Perhaps the most important principle behind the way ZTE operates is that we have to fulfil three different roles simultaneously.
We are a football club. We are a community. And we are a business operating in a market environment.
In the short term, the interests of these three roles can sometimes conflict.
As supporters, naturally, we all want ZTE to keep its best players, continuously strengthen the squad and compete for the best possible result every season. If possible, to become champions.
There is nothing wrong with that. For us, too, this is the emotional essence of football.
Economic reality, however, places limits on how a club can pursue these ambitions.
The Hungarian football market is simply too small to sustain professional clubs through traditional market revenues alone. There are neither enough consumers nor sufficient purchasing power for supporter spending to finance the entire operation of an NB I club.
This applies to direct revenues – ticketing, matchday spending and merchandising – but also indirectly to broadcasting rights and sponsorship. Ultimately, the value of these revenues is also determined by the size and value of the consumer community surrounding football.
This is not an opinion. It is the reality of the market in which we operate.
Player Sales Are Not a Consequence of the Strategy. They Are Part of the Strategy.
ZTE’s estimated operating costs for this season are approximately €9.30 million.
Our projected revenue excluding player sales, however, is approximately €3.80 million.
The difference is approximately €5.50 million.
That gap has to be financed somehow.
For the current season, we project approximately €4.83 million in revenue from player sales. This means that more than half of the club’s total projected revenue comes from the transfer market.
And even then, we are not talking about profit: the current budget still projects a deficit of approximately €670,000.
This is why it is important to understand that when ZTE sells a player, the transfer fee is not simply “profit” that disappears from the club.
It is what helps keep the club operating.
It finances wages and taxes. It finances travel, nutrition, accommodation, medical services, scouting, technology, equipment, infrastructure and everything else required to operate a professional football club every day.
The international player market is therefore one of the most important pillars of ZTE’s business model.
The logic is simple: we need to identify talent, develop it, create value, and ultimately generate more revenue from a player’s transfer than we invested in acquiring and developing that player.
We do not sell players because we do not want a strong team.
We need to operate successfully in the player market so that we can continue to have a strong team in the long term.
What May Look Like a Contradiction Ultimately Points in the Same Direction
This is where the interests of the business, the team, the player and the supporter come together.
The club’s economic interest is to identify, develop and transfer good players because the revenue generated through this process helps secure ZTE’s operations and future.
But to achieve that, we first need good players.
Good players make the team better.
A better team is capable of achieving better results.
And better results are ultimately what bring the greatest joy to our supporters.
The same process also serves the interests of the player. A young or developing footballer looks for a club where he will be given an opportunity, where he can play, develop, showcase his ability and ultimately progress to the next level of his career.
At first glance, these may appear to be different objectives.
The club needs sustainability. The supporter wants a successful team. The player wants to develop and progress.
But if the system works properly, achieving one of these objectives helps the other two to be achieved as well.
This is the point of convergence on which we want to build ZTE’s model.
To Achieve This, We Need to Rebuild Our Player Development System
Our responsibility, however, cannot end with identifying players on the international market.
Our own youth development system is one of the most important parts of ZTE’s history and its future.
Over the past ten years, the Hungarian academy system has developed into a structure in which the country’s most talented young players have primarily been channelled towards the leading state-funded academies.
ZTE has never been part of that system.
We have to face the consequences of this reality: in recent years, not only the best young players from other parts of Hungary, but in many cases even the greatest talents from our own region have had numerous other academies ahead of ZTE as their preferred destinations.
We have to change that.
Not through communication, but through work.
We Are Investing More Than €1 Million in the Academy
Our objective is for ZTE to once again become a genuine alternative for the most talented young players in our region.
The next step is to achieve the same nationally and, eventually, internationally.
It is not enough simply to say that youth development matters to us.
We have to build the system required to make it work.
This year alone, we are investing more than €1 million exclusively in the infrastructural development of our academy.
We have also completed a comprehensive sporting and technical analysis of our youth development operations. Based on its findings, we have redesigned our development programme from this season onwards, while almost the entire coaching and management structure of the academy has also been transformed.
The success of youth development, however, cannot be judged on the basis of a single season.
The true validation of an academy’s work only comes years later.
For us, the measure is clear: a youth development system is successful if it produces players who reach the ZTE first team and develops players with sufficient international value and quality to progress further in their careers.
And achieving this requires not only development, but also the right competitive pathway.
Talent Must Always Play at the Right Level
Today, from county-level football all the way to NB I, we have either our own team or a partner club at every level of the Hungarian senior football pyramid.
This matters because two players of the same age can develop at completely different speeds.
One may still need youth football. Another may already need to compete against senior players. For one player, NB III may represent the right next step; for another, it may be NB II, while someone else may already be ready for NB I.
The purpose of our partnership structure is to ensure that we do not have to lose a player simply because, at a particular moment in his development, there is no appropriate competitive level available to him within the ZTE pathway.
Through our cooperation in the Slovenian top division, we can potentially provide an additional level of competition which, from a sporting perspective, can serve as a bridge between NB II and NB I.
The objective is to create a complete player pathway in which talented footballers can always compete at the level that best serves the next stage of their development.
And Where Does the Hungarian Player Fit Into This?
Exactly where every other player does: at the heart of ZTE’s future.
We fully understand that many of our supporters want to see as many Hungarian players as possible – and even more importantly, as many players from Zalaegerszeg and Zala County as possible – wearing the ZTE shirt.
So do we.
If one day the best eleven players available to ZTE are all Hungarian, we will happily put all eleven of them on the pitch.
But the current Hungarian player market creates a particular challenge. Every NB I club competes within the same relatively limited market for Hungarian players who are immediately ready to perform at first-division level. When supply is limited, prices naturally increase.
That is why we do not build our squad based on passports.
We do not sign a foreign player because he is foreign. And we do not sign a Hungarian player simply because he is Hungarian.
We look for the player who represents the best decision for ZTE based on sporting quality, cost and future potential.
At the same time, we are working and investing significantly in our academy so that, in the future, more and more of those players can come from Zalaegerszeg itself.
These two strategies are not opposites.
They are two parts of the same plan.
ZTE Is Not Defined by the Passports in the Dressing Room
Beyond all of this, there is something more important than any economic model, transfer strategy or sporting decision.
ZTE belongs to Zalaegerszeg and to Zala County.
It always has, and it always will.
The identity of this club is not defined by the nationalities of the players in the starting eleven.
ZTE belongs to Zalaegerszeg and to Zala County because its supporters are here. Its stadium is here. Its employees work here. The children of its academy grow up here. Families in Zalaegerszeg pass down from generation to generation what it means to support ZTE.
And this club has a responsibility to give value back to that community.
There may be Hungarian, Argentine, Croatian, Nigerian or Australian players on the pitch.
The shirt remains the same.
The crest remains the same.
The city and our region remains the same.
Our Responsibility Is to Make Sure There Is Something to Pass On
ZTE’s story began long before us, and we want it to continue long after us.
We are responsible for only one period in that history.
Our task is to keep this club alive, preserve its history, develop it, make it more professional and more competitive, and one day pass it on stronger than we received it.
In the current Hungarian market environment, that requires a sustainable economic model. We need to operate successfully in the international player market. We need to develop our infrastructure. We need to make our academy competitive again. We need to create the right pathway for our young players. And at the same time, we need to build a first team that Zala County can be proud of.
We do not claim that every decision we make will be right.
We do not claim that every signing will succeed.
We do not claim that every plan will unfold exactly as we imagine.
And we do not expect everyone to agree with every decision we make.
But we want you to understand why we make them.
This is OPEN ZTE.
Showing the numbers behind our decisions. Showing the problems we are trying to solve. Showing when something does not work. And showing the direction and principles according to which we operate this club.
Because ultimately, every decision we make serves the same objective:
to preserve ZTE for the future.
More professional.
More competitive.
More sustainable.
More closely connected to its community.
We do not want a more foreign ZTE.
We do not want a less Hungarian ZTE.
We want a better ZTE.
