BREAKING NEWS Court decides 1947-2003 palmares belongs to CSA Steaua (4th league) in the Steaua vs FCSB case. Not a final decision, but it's unlikely to be overturned.
We are 2 rounds in the new season, here's what happened. The opening match was Voluntari - Sepsi Sf. Gheorghe 0-0, absolutely nobody cared, the match looked like a friendly. Terrible marketing from the Football Federation. Astra Giurgiu - Botosani 2-2 was surprising due to the act Botosani was 0-2 ahead. CFR Cluj - Poli Iasi 1-1 slow and kinda disappointing start for the champions. Also, ridiculously few people in the stands. Gaz Metan Medias - Chindia Targoviste 2-2 CSU Craiova - Clinceni 3-2, quite an entertaining match between a top 5 team and a newly promoted one. Craiova fans went from agony when Clinceni equalised in the 93rd minute, to extasy as their 21 year old debutante scored a 95th minute screamer for the win. FCSB - Hermannstadt 4-3, the match only shows that FCSB is affected by having to improvise a left back and a all winning midfielder. The owner Gigi Becali doesn't seem to e interested in buying one (and yes, the owner does the transfers, the manager has little say in it.) Viitorul - Dinamo 5-0, Viitorul players were on a very good day, all attacks being dangerous. At 3-0 I think, a few Dinamo fans managed to enter the pitch while the others made quite a fuss in the away section. It wasn't surprising, their team has been terribly managed overall and they demanded their manager and the owner to leave. They ended up being evacuated (or simply deciding to leave) and Viitorul scored another 2 goals after the 15 minute break due to the trouble in the stands. 2nd round Hermannstadt - Gaz Metan 0-2, the home team had 2 players sent off, 1st in the 46th minute, the 2nd in the 84th. Chindia - Viitorul 0-1, suprisingly difficult match for Viitorul against a newly promoted team. Owner and manager Gheorghe Hagi admitted they did badly but were lucky to be saved by one good shot. Botosani - Voluntari 4-1 the only surprising thing was the margin by which Voluntari lost. Poli Iasi - Astra 1-0 Clinceni - CFR Cluj 1-4 dominating performance by the champions. Dinamo - CSU Craiova 0-2, the match was overshadowed by the fact that Dinamo's manager had a heart attack duringg the first half of the match (he is okay). The score is not surprising. Sepsi - FCSB 0-0, FCSB captain Florin Tanase said they dominated, which is half the truth as Sepsi defended brilliantly to allow only 2 shots on goal. There was a bit of controversy as the referee should have given Sepsi a penalty late in the match.
I don't mind learning stuff about other leagues, talking only about the Premier League can be boring...Most of us do not care about Virorul VS Cluj, but I'd like to know if anything unusual happens...
Your league is not one of the strongest (as indicated in the Craiova - AEK Athens tie in the UEL), but I think you could share a good goal or something... I think a Romanian won the Puckas and it is unbelievable how many goals go unnoticed... Just like this one scored in the Greek League...
What's the significance of this then? Have the historical records of Steaua been handed to a fourth tier team?
Not "the historical records of Steaua been handed to a fourth tier team", but Steaua, the 4th tier team proved that FCSB has been illegally using its records/trophies.
i went there a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it, nice city. But I never saw any flags or evidence of support, and I've never heard of any teams from the city in European competition, like you do with Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara etc. I guess it underachieves as a footballing city...
Well, they never were a great team and never had a great fan base or supporter group. But I'd say not seeing flags or evidence of support is the same in almost all cities, Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara, Ploiesti, and Craiova are the exceptions where you will see some graffitis around the city.
Traditional team Dinamo Bucharest has grave financial issues and is at risk of entering insolvency. Astra Giurgiu players have also not been paid for a few months. FCSB overcame it's terrible start of season and is back on the podium, 3rd place. The stadiums for EURO2020 still aren't finished ( Rapid stadium most likely wont be finished in time), Steaua stadium doing decent progress. It's a rather bad year for Romanian football, let's hope spring and summer will bring some positive changes.
Most likely absolutely nothing as they would anyway be just training grounds, National Arena is the only one to host matches.
The fall of Romanian football The Romanian national team has been a somewhat inconsistent performer in its history, having been present at the first three editions of the World Cup, then missing from it for 30 years, returning for WC 1970 and then being out again until 1990. During the ‘90s Romania had it’s famous Golden Generation led by players as “Maradona of the Carpathians” Gheorghe Hagi, former FC Barcelona captain Gheorghe Popescu and Dan Petrescu. But after the last major tournament of the Golden Generation, EURO 2000, things have gone south for Romanian football. Let us try to see why. 1. The support of the communist regime The communist regime of Romania has always looked favourably at sports, seriously funding sports teams from grassroots all the way up to professionals. The two greatest Romanian teams, Steaua and Dinamo Bucharest, were both the teams of the state, Steaua was the Army’s club, Dinamo the club of the Police. Of course, this leads to debates when it comes to the leagues won by both as they have seemed to been “helped” by referees and managed to transfer new, promising players somewhat “immorally”. The fact stays that the communist regime kept youngsters in sports, often coaches from one sport sending children to coaches of other sports as they deemed they would be better in another sport. Football being the most popular sports, obviously, had the largest number of children. On this giant effort came along the generation of the players that formed the Golden Generation. After the fall of the regime, this huge “mechanism” went to waste, not just because of lack of funding, but also because of decreasing interest in sports. Many previously solid clubs went bankrupt and never re-starting their existence. 2. The sports identity certificate and new shady businessmen owners The sports identity certificate came along with a law which “forced” the privatization of football clubs that were funded and controlled by parts of the state, teams such as Steaua Bucharest and Dinamo Bucharest (but not only). If a team was owned by the state, it had to move to the private sector by going under the control of a private association, in the case of Steaua Bucharest, AFC Steaua. We must mention that, because of this, the Army’s Club (Army’s Sports Club – CCA) had a its own CIS (certificate de identitate sportiva in Romanian) and AFC Steaua Bucharest a different one. This led to Steaua Bucharest being taken over by the Paunescu brothers which led to the present problem of CCA Steaua Bucharest and FC FCSB. But, in the general case, football clubs got into the hands of businessmen who thought they could make money out of football: Steaua Bucharest “owned” by the Paunescu brothers and later Gigi Becali, Dinamo Bucharest to Cristian Borcea, Rapid Bucharest (not a state team) to George Copos; and other examples. The bad management of these owners and their staff lead to clubs having worse and worse financial situations, some teams, such as Rapid Bucharest even going bankrupt. Dinamo, in the present, has also been passed by Cristian Borcea to Ionut Negoita who also can’t afford the club anymore and is looking to sell it for the sum of 1 romanian leu (0.21 euros) as the team has debt of around 3 million euro. 3. Corruption Of course, can’t talk about Romania without mentioning corruption. So, as I mentioned before, in the beginning, there was corruption in the form of the state-owned teams being helped up by the state (referees threatened to “whistle” a certain way, players threatened to join certain teams and such), right after the fall of the regime, the infamous Cooperative mechanism was born. What was that? Of course, its existence is based just on rumour and gossip, but as we all know, that doesn’t mean it’s not true, just simply never proven. The Cooperative is a supposed group of teams, led by late Jean Padureanu and his team, Gloria Bistrita, that often arranged the results of matches. For example, if one team of the Cooperative was in danger of relegation, while another was doing okay, the better team would lose to help save the other one. And as we all know, this isn’t the proper way to run sports. 4. The infamous “law of Mitica” Law number 4/2008, commonly known as “the law of Mitica” (legea lui Mitica) is the creation of former president of the Professional Football League, Dumitru “Mitica” Dragomir. What is this law and why was it created? In the 90s and early 00s, you could see from time to time violent actions committed by football supporters: in 1997, Dinamo supporters set fire to Ghencea stadium in their away match against Steaua, Craiova – Dinamo 2004 when a Craiova supporter tried to attack a Dinamo player, Dinamo - Steaua 2006, Gloria Buzau – Dinamo Bucharest 2007, etc. The law promised, marketed and created by Mitica Dragomir came with very harsh punishments against supporters, while the general public might not have been against it, the ultras (the main target of the law) and some rights activists did protest it. For example, Radu Chirita, attorney and law professor said:”according to the law, any message that is to be displayed in a stadium has to pass by the vigilant eye of riot police who can decide forbidding its display, if, from the height of his helmet, he decides that the messages instigates to violence, hate or is offensive.” Furthermore, Chirita pointed out that:”you can get banned if you enter in the stadium while drunk. … I can go drunk to the pub, on the street, to the town hall or to tv without risking to be banned there, but I can’t go drunk to a match because I risk not seeing the stadium for 6 months.” Looking back now, we can see that all this law did was to simply ban people from the stadiums driving attendances even lower, as violent incidents kept happening after that, maybe even more often than before. 5. Falling interests in football In the 2002-03 season, the average first league (Divizia A) attendance was 7.438. With highs up to 40.000 people in attendance and lows with barely above 100. This might not seem a lot, but high compared to the attendance of recent years: 3510 average attendance between 2013 and 2018). This fall in interested came along with the bankruptcy of traditional teams that did have more supporters, a few examples: Rapid Bucharest, Politehnica Timisoara, Universitatea Cluj, Petrolul Ploiesti, etc. We can see a little increase today as the above mentioned teams all made it back to the 2nd league, we can expect a further increase when/if these teams promote to the 1st league.
I really wanted to go and see a game in Bucharest when I went a couple of years ago, unfortunately, Dinamo and Steaua weren't playing the day I would have been able to see!
