Month: April 2019

Romania. Coming back to the front of European football was first noticed in club football, mainly Dinamo (Bucharest). New talented generation of players was pushing up and they were concentrated in Dinamo, Steaua, and Universitatea (Craiova), but as a whole, Romanian championship was fairly equal and competitive. Even with government meddling, most clubs still managed to hold their ground unlike other Communist countries. That was the first division, though. The lower level was less interesting.

Second Division was traditionally large – divided into three groups of 18 teams each. Of course, Romania is big country, but when looking at the second division one cannot help but feel that second division would have been better if much smaller: apart from former first league clubs, nobody else was neither strong, nor improving. Large number of clubs, clearly belonging to industrial enterprises, were simply existing – factory teams, not able to keep talented players and clearly of much lower grade when compared with the big clubs of the same cities. There were some dark events which were either too much for cover up, or just used for excusing bigger fixing going on in the top league, for three clubs were penalized with point deduction this season: 2 points were deducted from FC Constanta’s record, Steaua CFR (Cluj) had also 2 points deducted, and Unirea (Slobozia) – 6 points. None was really affected from the penalties: Steaua CFR and Unirea were going to be relegated even without deductions; FC Constanta was not going neither up, nor down, so it did not matter. That was more or less everything, for there was no real race for promotion: the winners of each group went up, but they had no rivals in 2 of the three groups. In the 3rd two teams competed for the first place.

Serie I.

Otelul (Galati) was perhaps the big disappointment: instead of running for promotion, they finished 8th with 34 points. That was 5 points less than the 2nd placed Gloria (Bistrita), but… second or 8th, no team really challenged the group leader. FC Constanta ended 5th with 35 points.

Gloria (Buzau) had no rivals at all, finishing 8 points ahead of Gloria (Bistrita). Strong season, but next season would be tougher, playing top league football.

Serie II. This was ‘Bucharest’ group, in a sense – 5 teams from the capital played here, but they were nothing like the top clubs of the city and the country: Dinamo Victoria, Progresul Vulcan, Autobuzul, Automatica, Metalul… all of them factory teams, some with stronger past – mostly Progresul, but also to a point Victoria and Metalul, the rest never heard of. However, the Bucharest pack played no major role in the championship.

Speaking of clubs with outlandish names – this is IP Aluminia (Slatina). The name means ‘aluminum’, suggesting belonging to some mining or metallurgical industry. In the competition for the weirdest name, this club probably loses to fellow group members Nitramonia (Fagaras) and to Serie III gloriously named Armatura (Zalau).

FCM Brasov had no rivals and returned to top flight finishing 10 points ahead 2nd placed Siomii IPA (Sibiu).

Serie III – the only group with interesting race for the 1st place. May be because it had the largest number of former first division members of good standing in the past: UTA (Arad), CSM (Resita), Olimpia (Satu-Mare), Universitatea (Cluj), Politehnica (Timisoara). The last two lead the championship and fought between themselves for the first place. CSM (Resita) finished 3rd with 42 points – 5 points ahead of already mentioned Armatura (Zalau), 4th. But the best teams were far, far ahead. At the end, 3 points devided winner and loser. Universitatea (Cluj) finished 2nd with 51 points.

Politehnica (Timisoara) topped the league with 54 points and returned to first division.

A second look at the winners, partly because of the lovely and unusual for them kit – the usual colours of Politehnica ware violet and white; light blue and hoops are strange. The other reason for the second look is that Politehnica was the strongest second division club by far: they lost only 5 matches (the winners of the other 2 groups lost more games, even playing easier groups), scored 93 goals (the second best record of second division as a whole belonged to Universitatea Cluj – 78), and had the best defensive record, allowing only 22 goals in 34 games (again, their rivals Universitatea had the 2nd best record – 25 goals). They shared the record of most wins with rivals Universitatea – 25 matches each. From the 3 promoted teams, Politehnica was the most likely to stay in the top league.

The Czecholsovak Cup. As ever, it was played between the winners of the Czech and the Slovak cups – Sparta won the Czech, beating twice Dukla at the final. Inter (Bratislava) won the Slovak cup. Inter was hardly a match to Sparta at the moment and lost 2-4.

Nice effort, but the difference in class was too big and Inter had to be satisfied with little.

Sparta, with a double, made a clear statement that they were going to lead in the following years. It was strong squad, made of current and rising stars – Straka, Hasek, Griga, Berger, Stejskal, Jarolim, Chovanec. As usual, Vaclav Jezek did good work at the helm of the team. Sparta came back with a bang, but how long they would be at the top? Perhaps in 1984 it was impossible to imagine that Sparta would be leading not only to the end of the 1980s, but much further. Hard to tell what exactly changed: old clubs like Sparta and Slavia were not favoured by the Communist state – unless there was some official influence, it was difficult to imagine Sparta staying strong for long. It could have been some shift in official circles in their favour, it could be some heavy ‘sponsor’, difficult to ignore. However, most important was the make of the squad: a big group of quite young talented players. Nobody else such talent, including Dukla. Keeping them at home was easy: Sparta was a club from the capital – provincial clubs were not a competition at all. No reason for key Sparta players to go to Dukla, Slavia, or Bohemians either – at best, the competition could match Sparta’s offer and then why leaving a winning team? Sparta did not just restored its solid position, but became the team to lead Czechoslovakian football in the 1980s.