The setting is a football academy on the outskirts of the Hungarian city of Szekesfehervar.
Home to two indoor seven-a-side pitches and a small gym, Fonix Gold’s facilities are modest but its track record of developing young footballers is remarkable. The shelves and cabinets in the clubroom are packed full of trophies, the walls adorned with framed photographs of past line-ups celebrating cherished triumphs. And prime among them is Dominik Szoboszlai.
This is where the current Liverpool midfielder and Hungary captain spent much of his childhood. Fonix Gold was co-founded by his father, Zsolt, in 2007, when Szoboszlai was seven, and has since expanded from an initial intake of 20 to around 250 youngsters, aged from five to 19.
Remarkably, three graduates are part of the Hungary squad, with Szoboszlai playing alongside Kevin Csoboth (of Swiss side St Gallen) and Bendeguz Bolla (Austria’s Rapid Vienna). Many more Fonix Gold old boys play top-flight football in Hungary, while more than a dozen of the academy’s current crop represent their country at various age-group levels.
“It is something to be proud of, especially when you think about how long we’ve been around and our size,” Zsolt tells The Athletic. “When Dominik was here, we were working with kids from a small area. Now they are coming from anything up to 100km or even 200km (124 miles) away.”
Zsolt Szoboszlai at the Fonix Gold academy (James Pearce/The Athletic)
The Athletic spoke to Zsolt about his motivation for setting up Fonix Gold and the unconventional training methods which helped turn his son into Hungary’s most expensive footballer ever and a key player in the early days of Arne Slot’s Anfield revolution, as well as to his former school teachers in Szekesfehervar, who remember “a born leader” and a pupil “who hated losing”.
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“As soon as Dominik started walking, he had a ball at his feet,” reveals Zsolt, speaking via an interpreter, after taking a seat in Fonix Gold, around an hour’s drive from the Hungarian capital Budapest. “From the age of three, I was giving him some small practice drills to do — it was only if he wanted to do it. With my background, it was natural that I wanted to pass on some of my football knowledge.”
Zsolt played professionally in his homeland and in neighbouring Austria’s lower divisions before turning his attention to coaching after suffering a serious Achilles injury.
Those drills he set up for his son at home included arranging a series of water bottles across the living room for him to slalom his way through with a ball at his feet. If one was knocked over, he would have to start again.
“If I wanted to make it a bit easier for him, then the bottles were full of water,” he explains. “If I wanted to make it more difficult then much less water in them, as the lighter ones would easily fall over. I’d also give him some rubber balls with a target to aim for and a balloon to do keepy-uppies.”
If the doorbell rang at home, they would race each other to see who could answer it first.
“Anything that we could make a competition out of — even who could get dressed first,” Zsolt smiles. “It was about instilling a competitive spirit in him. It can’t do you any harm; no matter what career you choose, you are always competing with someone.”
Dominik joined the youth ranks at Fehervar FC (then known as Videoton due to a sponsorship deal) aged six, but his stay with the local top-flight club was brief as Zsolt made the bold decision to remove his son and launch his own academy.
Dominik Szbosozlai’s story had humble origins at Fonix Gold (James Pearce/The Athletic)
“I felt that youth football needed some different ideas,” he says. “Together with two other parents, we became co-founders. We wanted to do something different to what had been before. We placed a big emphasis on technical ability. The more technically skilled a player is, the more able they are to solve problems during a match.
“I coached one adult team after I finished playing but helping youth players was always what I was most passionate about. At the age of six or seven, you could see Dominik had a talent. He could control the ball and come out of situations quite easily.”
In small-sided training games, Zsolt would give youngsters on the same team matching coloured headbands rather than bibs to wear and a golf ball to hold in each hand.
“The aim with the headbands was to make them look up all the time to find a team-mate and with the golf balls it was to make sure they didn’t commit a foul by pulling an opponent’s shirt. It was about teaching the technique of using your body to get in front of a player rather than shirt-pulling.
“Dominik was quite thin, so he didn’t always look for the one-v-one contact situations. He preferred to use his brain. The main thing was to learn everything about the game. The aim wasn’t to become a professional footballer, it was to be as good as you can.
Zsolt with some of the many trophies won at Fonix (James Pearce/The Athletic)
“He still went to the cinema and on trips, like a normal kid, but it was at the right time. When we went away on summer holidays, we would always find somewhere to do some training.”
Fonix Gold’s success locally led to invitations to prestigious European youth tournaments such as the Cordial Cup, which included sides from leading clubs such as Red Bull Salzburg of Austria and Germany’s Bayern Munich.
Zsolt, 49, points to a framed collage of photos from their triumph there in 2011 hanging on the wall. A 10-year-old Dominik stands proudly in the front row with his winner’s medal draped around his neck.
A young Dominik (bottom row, second from left) at Fonix in 2011 (James Pearce/The Athletic)
“We had a good team and beat some of the big favourites — Dominik was the driving force,” his father says. “He was always playing with older kids. He was born in 2000 but always played with those kids born in ’98 and ’99. He played all over the pitch but was always a midfielder.
“In 2011, the day before we played Salzburg, Dominik was ill and had been vomiting. The next day, he put in such a great performance. The people from Salzburg were so impressed they invited him to go to another competition with them a few weeks later. People started to see that the kids here were skilful.”
Scouts continued to flock to watch Dominik play. He also spent time at Italian club Atalanta and Dutch outfit ADO Den Haag before accepting a chance to join Salzburg’s academy.
“They weren’t really trials. Going to Atalanta and Den Haag was more just to show him what the international level was like,” Zsolt explains. “We weren’t planning on taking him there. It was just to get some feedback on where he was at.
“We weren’t thinking about a professional career when we chose Salzburg, it was more about the youth development structure they had to improve players between 15 and 18. The rules were that Dominik could only go abroad when he turned 16 and at Fonix we only had teams up to under-15s at the time, so he spent half a year playing for MTK (a top-flight club in Budapest) before moving to Austria.”
Dominik was a serial winner at Fonix (Courtesy of Zsolt Szoboszlai)
A five-minute drive away from Fonix, at Mihaly Vorosmarty School, there is a warm welcome from headteacher Bernadett Makaine. As 400 children aged six to 14 prepare to head home, she opens a tin of biscuits in her office to mark The Athletic’s visit.
Her son Andras, now studying law at university in Budapest, was in the same class at Dominik.
“Dominik is such a big star in this country, but he still comes back to his old school when they have reunions,” Makaine says. “He was a pupil here from the age of seven, when there was a co-operation agreement with Fonix. He was allowed to go there in the afternoons to train. He was always so dedicated to playing football. Whenever the bell rang for the break, he was always the first out into the courtyard to start playing with a ball.
“Dominik is an inspiration for all the students here. They all talk about him. They all dress like him. They all watch Liverpool’s matches.”
Mihaly Vorosmarty School, Dominik’s alma mater (James Pearce/The Athletic)
Csaba Szili taught Szoboszlai history and was also headteacher at the time — and manager of the school football team.
“I’m proud of what he’s achieved but I’m even more proud about the person he is and the way he carries himself,” says Szili, now a local government representative. “Dominik was always a good student, but more committed to playing football than studying. He did what he had to do.
“We had a legendary team which won every competition we entered. We won the Student Olympics in Hungary twice. Bendeguz Bolla (now a national-team colleague, as mentioned above) was in the same school team as Dominik.”
Csaba Slett, his PE teacher and school football coach, joins us, armed with photos of that all-conquering side.
“Dominik became captain and was a born leader. He always took responsibility,” he says. “He had such good vision on the pitch. The commitment and ability were clear, but I can’t say I expected him to reach the level he has done. For a Hungarian player, it can’t really be an expectation. Not many get to the level he’s at.
“He hated losing. That was something he had to learn. When he was in the third year, he was playing against boys two years older. If we lost, sometimes he would get angry or upset. You can see on Dominik’s face here (referring to this next photo) that he wasn’t happy about the situation!
A dejected Szoboszlai, who has always hated losing, after a defeat (Courtesy of Csaba Slett)
“But usually, we won. I remember we played a qualifying match against another team from Fehervar for a five-a-side cup and we were much stronger than them. Every time we scored, Dominik raced to get the ball out of the net and put it back on the centre spot so the game could kick off again as soon as possible.
“After 10 minutes, we were 31-0 up! The referee just blew the final whistle, because he was having trouble writing all the goals down. We won the futsal national championships at age 12 and 13, and Dominik was voted the best player. We didn’t really need a goalkeeper.”
A tour of the school takes us to the hall where Szoboszlai’s name is engraved in granite alongside the other members of that 2014 line-up under the heading ‘Kivalo Labdarugocsapat’ — excellent football team.
From left: Dominik’s old history teacher Csaba Szili, PE teacher Csaba Slett and Mihaly Vorosmarty head Bernadett Makaine (James Pearce/The Athletic)
“Dominik had the personality to handle moving away from home at 16,” says Zsolt back at Fonix Gold, as he reflects on the move to Red Bull Salzburg which launched his son’s professional career. “We’d already helped prepare him for this. During the coaching phase, it was built into him that, if things went well, he would probably have to leave.”
Progress in Austria was swift, with his form for sister side FC Liefering leading to a Salzburg first-team debut at 17 years and seven months in May 2018.
The competitive edge between father and son continued to burn bright. When a teenage Dominik wanted a quote by former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard tattooed on his arm, he was told he could have Zsolt’s blessing on one condition.
“I said, ‘OK. But only if you finish top of all the fitness tests in pre-season’,” he adds. “Even today, those records at Salzburg are still held by Dominik.
“When he wanted to buy his own car, I said, ‘Yes, if Salzburg qualify for the Champions League and you have something to do with them getting there’. They played Maccabi Tel Aviv (in the final qualifying round in September 2020) and he scored in both legs, so he was able to get the car.”
Dominik Szoboszlai flourished at Red Bull Salzburg (Andreas Schaad/Bongarts/Getty Images)
His development continued apace after moving across the border with Germany to another club in the Red Bull stable, RB Leipzig, the following January, helping them win and then retain the DFB-Pokal, Germany’s equivalent of the FA Cup in England, in 2022 and 2023.
He was just 22 when he was appointed captain of Hungary, following a vote among coach Marco Rossi’s squad, and he led them into this summer’s Euros where they narrowly missed out on a place in the last 16. “Leadership has always been part of his personality,” Zsolt says. “Some consider it strange, as I was quite strict with him, but he’s also a personality and that helped make him the man he is. The ability to deal with pressure is one of the reasons why he became captain. This is how he grew up — always under some kind of pressure, but in a positive sense.”
In July last year, Szoboszlai completed a £60million ($78.8m at the current rate) move from Leipzig to Liverpool, becoming the fourth most expensive signing in the club’s history. He got off to a flying start at Anfield before injuries dented his momentum in the second half of last season. However, he returned refreshed after a break this summer and has excelled under new head coach Arne Slot in the early weeks of the 2024-25 campaign.
“He built up in stages, from Salzburg to Leipzig to Liverpool,” Zsolt says. “We talked about the move to England together. There was an Italian team and another English team but we decided on Liverpool — a club with great history and tradition, who could keep Dominik heading in the right direction. He can achieve whatever he wants to achieve.”
Zsolt believes his son’s career has benefitted from having small feet (UK size seven; eight in the U.S.), but he laughed off suggestions he ever put his son in boots that were too small on purpose to try to stop his feet from growing.
“There is only one rule we have with the kids when it comes to boots: don’t buy a bigger boot than you need,” he says. “If the boot is too big, your foot will slip and slide, and your ankles will come up at the side. But yeah, I think having smaller feet helps. With a smaller foot, you can control it better and it’s easier to learn the finer touches.”
Szoboszlai will want to lift silverware again, but in a Liverpool shirt (Courtesy of Zsolt Szoboszlai)
Our time is nearly up as Zsolt takes a phone call from his son, who returns to Fonix Gold to attend summer camps and provides support to the youngsters dreaming of following in his footsteps.
Watching his boy captain their country — his next assignment sees him take on Germany in Dusseldorf on Saturday in a Nations League match — and shine on the big stage in the Premier League must make all those hours of sacrifice worthwhile.
“I never thought of it as work,” Zsolt says. “I was just doing what I love doing. I enjoyed it, and the same goes for Dominik. It meant we could spend time together. We were both motivated. If you want to achieve something, then you have to really work for it. That’s true about everything in life.
“My advice would be: ‘Don’t dream, set yourself goals’. Dreams can just stay in your head somewhere.”
(Top photos: Getty Images; Zsolt Szoboszlai)