Romanian football

What about your former captain, Gheorghe Popescu?

 

The mayor of the city of Oradea (200.000 inhabitants) announced the plan to build a new stadium in the city. Based on the consultations he had and on what he saw while visiting Targu Jiu (that just opened its new, 12k seat stadium) he proposed the new stadium to have 14-15k seats.

People in the comments reacted saying the city needs a stadium of at least 20k seats, because there is "hunger for football" in the city.

I laughed at those people.

 

Sure, but Romania isn't Italy (and Im so jealous...). We have an average of like 3.000-4.000 people at matches, IN THE FIRST LEAGUE. The team with the highest average is Universitatea Craiova with 13.000. What's the average of Lecce? Or Bari? Benevento? Udinese?

 

@Cassio I wrote about Steaua in a previous post, hope you saw it since. And, to be clear, Cluj is a city, the team you are talking about is CFR Cluj. There is another, more popular team in the city, Universitatea Cluj who are in the 2nd league. CFR qualified to Europa League this season, were in group with Lazio, Celtic and Rennes. They finished the group 2nd, with a memorable 2-1 win against Lazio in Cluj. They were eliminated by Sevilla in the Knockout round after quite a tight double.

Well, to compare attendances, the highest average in Romania is 13k at Universitatea Craiova. See the difference between Italy and Romania? And why a 20k stadium for 200k city isn't exactly worth it? CFR Cluj had like 3000 in Europa League against Lazio! To be fair, they were dumb enough to make the cheapest ticket 31 euro, which is quite a lot by Romanian standards.

 

My team is kind of a "weird" exception. It's a fan-owned team that we run through an NGO so we're not allowed to sell tickets if we want to be able to use the stadium for free. We instead make a raffle where people get 1 raffle ticket for each 5 lei (1.03 euro) donated. We usually get around 400 lei (82 euro) per match.
But generally, in Romania, ticket prices range from 5 lei to around 200 lei (41.34 euro) on Europa League or CL matches.

Yes, a bigger newer stadium does attract more people. As I said above, the team with the highest average, Universitatea Craiova has 13k. Why? They just got a new stadium like 2 or 3 seasons ago. It was full for like the first 10-15 matches and then numbers dropped until how they are now. The stadium has a capacity of 30k, so attendance dropped to under half of capacity. And Universitatea is doing well in the 1st league, while Oradea just might have a 3rd league team if they promote this year.

 

Another thing is that in most places the infrastructure is very old, in bad condition. No seats, no roof on most stadiums, bad toilets, not being able to bring in bottles, and not being able to buy inside the stadium either. But then again, if 200 people attend a match, it's hard to show authorities there is an actual need to get some things fixed at least.

 

It seems like Romania is in a period of sports infrastructure modernisation (or simply in election year...). Since the new "Ilie Oana" (Petrolul Ploiesti, 2010), National Arena (2011) romanian stadiums and general sports infrastructure were kind of ignored. But starting with the year 2015, the inauguration of the new "Ion Oblemenco" stadium of Craiova, things have slowly started moving as it was followed in early 2019 by the "Tudor Vladimirescu" stadium of Targu Jiu and more recently, with constructions going on at: new Ghencea stadium (Steaua Bucharest), new Giulesti - Valentin Stanescu (Rapid Bucharest), the new Arch of Triumph (normally for rugby, but will be used as a training ground during the Euro), stadiums being built in Sfantu Gheorghe too (for Sepsi Sf. Gheorghe), Targoviste (Chindia Targoviste), extension to the stadium of Sibiu (after it was demolished and a 1st new stand was built). Besides this, we have plans for new stadiums announced in the following cities: Timisoara, Oradea . I expect a couple more to be added by the end of the year, maybe have renderings for the last 2 I mentioned

 

Romanian football and Covid19

I will try to explain you guys how Romanian football handled the covid19 situation.

1st League:
As the 1st league was already in the play-off stage, it has been decided to resume football as there weren't many matches left while there was still much up to debate, especially in the lower half of the table. However, upon football resuming, it was discovered that the doctor of FC Botosani and the storage person from Dinamo Bucharest both had covid19, therefore, the matches of these teams have been postponed, while the other matches went ahead as planned.

2nd League:
Here is where it gets interesting. UTA Arad was the leader of the 2nd league with 50 points, 11 ahead of the 2nd place, many considering them virtually promoted. What did the Romanian Football Federation do?

First, they said UTA Arad will get automatically promoted while places 2-6 play a play-off, but then the federation changed their mind and decided to include UTA in the play off AND HALVING THE POINTS of each team, leaving UTA with 25, only a 5 point advantage now, less than half of the previous 11. This has drawn some criticism, many arguing that this was an attempt to give one more chance to Rapid Bucharest and Petrolul Ploiesti who were 6th and 5th respectively and also being unfair to Metaloglobus Bucharest who had the same number of points as Rapid, 37. UTA Arad decided to attack this decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sports.

Secondly, they decided there will be no relegation, saving the asses of Sportul Snagov and Pandurii Targu Jiu who were far behind on points.
Only the play off will be played. Politehnica Timisoara and Universitatea Cluj put forward the idea of going back to a 2nd league made of 2 series as there will be more teams in the next season due to no relegation happening now.

3rd League:
Shitshow time! The romanian 3rd league is split up in 5 series. The federation initially proposed 5 options + 1 for suggestions that the clubs could vote on. The options were as following: a) resuming everything from where things were stopped, playing all 14 matches left; b) play-off/play-out keeping the same points, but reducing the number of games; c) play-off/play-out with halved points and reduced number of games; d) freezing the competition; e) declaring the season void, no promotion or relegation; f) another option, your proposal;

What was decided? The federation, however, ended up doing whatever they wanted which was: 1. the 1st places that had more than 3 points advantage would promote automatically (Aerostar Bacau and FC Universitatea Craiova, 1st and 3rd series), while the others would play a decisive match on neutral ground between the 1st and 2nd places: Unirea Slobozia - Mostistea Ulmu (2nd series, 3 point difference), Progresul Spartac - CSM Slatina (4th series, 37 points both), Comuna Recea - Minaur Baia Mare (5th series, 2 points difference). Having 2 teams that went bust mid-season, they decided to relegate only 3 teams, the 16-18th places.
This "solution" came with a lot of criticism: Progresul Spartac say that the federation did this to help CSM Slatina, other teams are mad as they missed out on the 2nd place by 1 or 2 points or by having fewer matches.
Another decision of the federation is to create a 6th series of the 3rd league starting next season.

4th League:
Normally, the way you promote from 4th to 3rd league is that the 2 champions of 2 counties would play a 2-leg match, the winner going up. The 4th league being non-professional, the federation left it up to the local associations how they would determine the champion of the county. The federation, however, decided to mix things up by not having a direct 2 leg match between champions of 2 counties, but to have now 3 county champions meeting each other in a mini-play-off, only the 1st place going up. These matches would happen on a neutral ground.