Romania – the big unheard of news was starting to export players again. The first foreign transfer since the early 70s was Nicolae Doru.
It was the East European pattern to the dot: without fuss an aging player, not meaning much inside or outside the country went to a smaller market. Doru was 28 years striker, who never played for the national team – he appeared 5 times for the Romanian Olympic team and had 1 appearance for the B national selection. He was a key player of Arges (Pitesti) and a local star, but nothing more than that. He was sold to Panathinaikos (Athens) and that was that. Foreign transfers were so much downplayed at home, that today some hail him as a big legend: the first Romanian to play abroad. It is untrue, of course, but today the word ‘legend’ is inflated to the point of ridiculous. Anyhow, Doru was the first of the second wave of Romanian players going to the West. Romania did the transfer in the summer of 1980, ahead of Bulgaria by half an year, yet, after the 1980-81 season only 2 East European countries were left stubbornly not exporting players and they will stay so ‘pure’ to the collapse of the Communism – DDR and Albania.
One other reason the transfer of Doru went unnoticed was that Romania hit rock bottom: the UEFA 5-years ranking placed it 21st – the last country having the right to bring 2 teams to the UEFA Cup and in great danger to become 1-team country, because Denmark was very close. The 1970s were disastrous decade – nothing good happened after playing at the 1970 World Cup finals. Romania was unable to qualify for neither World Cup nor European finals, the clubs were quickly eliminated in the European tournaments, a really lost decade and the beginning of the 80s was not looking very promising. The Second Division, although not a great indication of the state of the game, was still a bit indicative – Rapid (Bucharest) sunk there. To play with clubs like
Progresul (Corabia), which made the bulk of the three second division groups. Standing from left: Mitroi, Stefan, Bănulescu, Velica, Popescu, Cîrciumaru, I. Bîrţan, Tudorache, Grecu.
Squatting : Maereanu, Mialţu, V. Bîrţan, Dincă , Ciolca, Băbălău, S. Vlad.
FCM Braila was another typical example of second division clubs: not looking up, rather concerned with not going down to the third level.
Of course, there were clubs having played in the top league and mainly they were the prime candidates for promotion.
Petrolul (Ploesti),
CFR (Cluj), few others – those were the expected winners and normally such clubs won promotions at the end – this season they were CS Targoviste, FC Constanta, and the best known of them all
UTA (Arad). All three returning to top flight to give one more try.