Romania. This was the most glorious season of Romanian football – Steaua won the European Champions Cup. But behind the success was a scene difficult to hide, not a new one and not to end, leaving its ugly stamp on the country’s football to this very day. Corruption is the word, but it had peculiar flavor of Communist Eastern Europe and thus, with time, rumors eventually distorted reality to the points that truth cannot be even unearthed. Versions depend on who tells the story – and in effect it is story of the rivalry between Army and Police, both politically powerful and given to all dirty tricks. But since both players were the arms of the ruling Communist Party, at the end it was the game the Party itself played with the active involvement of the top man himself. To say that the triumph of Steaua was just a football matter would be at least incorrect: like everywhere in Eastern Europe, everybody had to go through military service, so recruitment of quality players was easy – just call them to do their service. Steaua always had a strong team – once you get whoever you want, it was to keep him by the double temptation of high officer salary and belonging to real good squad. But the Police had its own ways: the Secret Police was on top and ruled, all-powerful. Usually, the vast Police system had its own military force – the border guards service – so they were also able to call players to do their service and nobody can refuse. If the Army offered officer’s ranks and corresponding salaries and perks, the Police offered the same. That was still the base – there was more: intimidating referees, intimidating club officials, intimidating players and their relatives. Securitate – the Romanian Secret Police – had more options than the Army: for instance, before a derby the father of Steaua’s captain Tudorel Stoica would be arrested and charged for public disorder – that to upset Stoica, but it was also so easy to do – his father was notorious drunkard. In Steaua’s mythology, Securitate bugged their offices and dressing room – once the head of Securitate General Tudor Postelnicu told the Minister of Defence Constantin Olteanu verbatim the private conversion Olteanu had with Steaua’s assistant coach Anghel Iordanescu. Steaua’s efforts to sign the defender Adrian Bumbescu from Olt Scornicesti were frustrated for weeks – according to ‘innocent’ Steaua, who eventually blamed Securitate for that, but Olt was a club with special status of its own on one hand and Steaua still got the player they wanted, so they applied their own muscle. And this muscle was Valentin Ceausescu, the older son of ruler of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu. It was a brilliant move by the Army – in 1983 Steaua was falling behind not only Securitate’s Dinamo, but also behind provincial Univeristatea (Craiova) and was already 5 years without a title. General Constantin Olteanu appointed Valentin Ceausescu head of Steaua. Having a member of Ceausescu’s family as head of the club neutralized not just Securitate – the already mentioned Olt was much pampered club since the late 1970s, because it was part of the promotion of the village Nicolae Ceausescu was born – that is, the village became something a combination of villages called a town, Scornicesti. Can’t go against the glory of the most glorious – and if there is not enough glory to show, let create some. A football club, if there is nothing else. Thus, Olt suddenly had a strong team and climbed up to the first division. Once there… no way going down. Getting players from Olt was difficult, beating Olt was difficult – for it was unwise to beat them. But having a Ceausescu running Steaua neutrilzed Olt and Dinamo. And everybody else. By many accounts Valentin Ceausescu was modest and serious man, who worked hard for the club – that’s Steaua’s version, confirmed by players. On the other side of the fence… Valentin was and is a nuclear physicist. Nuclear physicists usually are quite ignorant of the art of managing sportclubs. And if Valentin was so gifted football manager, he would have been one now – but after Communism fell, he went back to nuclear physics. From this insight, it could be concluded that he was just a muscle – cannot say ‘no’ to the son of dictator. His mere presence was enough to get desired results. Bumbescu joined Steaua and not only he did. However, Securitate was not done with – they had the ear of father Ceausescu too. Besides, Valentin was not enough protection against his own father – the murky story of Ducadam, who disappeared for 5 years right after Steaua won the European Cup largely thanks to him, is attributed to the wrath Nicolae Ceausescu – according to one of the rumors, Ducadam angered Nicolae and Valentin could do nothing to stop his father. One common myth is that Valentin was so talented a manager, that he got Ford to sponsor Steaua – it is true that Steaua eventually played with Ford log on their shirts, but … at that time Nicolae was getting some US business to Romania. And when Valentin tried to get FIAT building a factory in the country in exchange for giving Hagi to Juventus, papa Nicolae blocked the deal – most likely because of his own deal with the Americans and also with Renault. As for Hagi, he was loaned from Sportul Studentesc for one game only – to play in the Supercup match against Dinamo (Kiev) in early 1987. He never returned to his original club – or he was never returned… The whole saga lasts at least 7 years, so everything now is mixed, but the presence of Valentin helped Steaua a lot. Yet, Securitate’s Dinamo was not blown away – just to keep the balance, let say that Dinamo managed to promote its second team to the top division. True, this club was renamed and became Victoria, but was it ever independent club? Victoria (Bucharest) quickly disappeared after the fall of Communism. It was still named Dinamo-Victoria in the great 1985-86 season, though… and had some interesting names in its squad: future stars of Dinamo. Yet, politics, intrigues, power struggles, and corruption aside, there was one very important fact: Romania had very strong generation at this time. Thus, at least two clubs were exceptionally good. Manipulating and fixing domestic football is one thing, but cannot be done on international stage – and Steaua, Dinamo, and the national team of Romania were internationally strong and stayed strong at least until this generation retired in the second half of the 1990s. This season, however, belonged entirely to Steaua.
Second Division. The usual 3 groups of 18 teams each, the winners promoted to First Division. Exotica appears here, but the stronger teams and typical candidates for promotion were former top flight clubs. Nothing very different from second division everywhere, but Eastern Europe had a specific different from the West. Exotic names like Gaz metan (Medias), Chimia (Falticeni), Metalul (Plopeni), Electroputere (Craiova), Tractorul (Brasov), Automatica (Bucharest), Mecanica fina Steaua, ICSIM (Bucharest), Armatura (Zalau) suggest industries – the bulk of Second Division was made of such teams, factory clubs, sometimes not only suggesting profession or what particular plant produced, but often just having the name of the plant as club name. However, such clubs declined as time passed and although it is difficult to make the point clear, it is good to try: what lays on the surface is money. Since Communist sport was supposed to be amateur, financing teams, maintaining facilities, paying the players had to be done in some disguised way. Having a factory team solved the problem, but there was more to it – originally, the idea of ‘true proletarian sport’ was formulated as workers sport – true workers in their spare time pursue sports. True workers are also proud of their ‘own factory’ and identify themselves with it – hence, electricians support their own club, textile workers – their factory team, and so on. And since, ideologically, the Socialist state is made from the union of workers, the army, the police, and the intellectuals, every branch has corresponding club. Back in the 1950s, factory clubs had their peak, but during the 1960s things changed – workers were somewhat left behind and factory clubs lost their position. Not immediately, but by the 1980s such clubs had lowly existance and served more private purposes: for instance, it was good for a factory director to have factory team – it was useful for reporting to the Communist Party: we are so forward-minded and do so much developing not only industry, but sports as well. Ill-guided pride also played role – many a director wanted to have his own pet projects, often they were sport teams. But the importance of such clubs declined and no factory was able to compete with big clubs belonging to central ministries, particularly with Army and Police. The sharp decline was most evident in the fate of Progresul (Bucharest) – once upon a time, it was very strong club, but since the late 1960s it was slowly going down until finding itself a permanent second-division club and even having to merge with another club to keep its place there – it was Progresul Vulcan by 1985 and one thing was sure: there was no coming back. May be occasional promotion to top flight was still possible, but no leading position in Romanian football. That was why the clubs with most industrial names were playing in Second Division or lower. But it was also depending on place: the only club of relatively large provincial city would very often have industrial name. It would be also attached to the biggest plant in the city – to finance relatively decent squad there was no other way. Party helped as well, for such a club practically represented the city on both sporting and ideological levels. If there were more than one club, the most popular got everything – thus, Universitatea represented Craiova, the students club, and Electroputere, the local industrial club, was left on its own. Back in the 1950s it was not like that, even the names of old clubs like Universitatea were changed to ‘proper’ proletarian names. By mid-80s the picture was very different – old clubs had their names restored, Army and Police remained leading clubs, bigger provincial cities had one strong club, and ‘workers’ clubs had secondary position at best. One other reason played a role in the decline – it was somewhat not taken into account in the original utopia: no factory club became popular. People tended to support old clubs or drifted to the new, but successful clubs, belonging to Army and Police. The idea that textile workers will support the team of their textile plant was illusion from start and to play a championship without fans in the stands… was just a waste of both money and ideological message. One result was exactly the Second Division final tables – city clubs, formerly in the first division, were in the upper half; factory clubs – in the lower half. Battles for promotion were fought between former top flight clubs – depending on how many of them were in particular Second Division group. And also depending on their current strength and ambition. Thus, only one group had a two-team battle for first place this season and all together 4 teams dominated the championship by far.
Serie I.
CS Botosani – 9th with 34 points. The league was pretty equal – 7 points divided the 17th from the 4th – so Botosani was one of the bulk. Dunarea CSU (Galati) was 3rd with 37 points. Politehnica (Iasi) – 2nd with 39 points.
Otelul (Galati) dominated the championship and without challengers won it with 52 points. 24 wins, 4 ties, 6 losses, 86-29. Easy return to top flight. Note their shirts – looks like they played with sponsor’s logo – not the first Romanian team to do that, but still before Steaua got Ford sponsorship.
Serie II. Not different from Serie I – most of the league was similarly strong or weak. CS Targoviste finished 3rd with 42 points. Progresul Vulcan (Bucharest) – 2nd with 42 points, thanks to better goal-difference.
Flacara (Moreni) had no competition and won the championship with 48 points. 20 wins, 8 ties, 6 losses, 46-25.
Serie III. The only difference between this league and the previous two was the exciting battle for the top position.
UTA (Arad) – with dark shirts, pictured here together with Hagi’s Sportul Studentesc, perhaps before a cup fixture – was 4th with 36 points. Down on their luck, this once upon a time strong club, was now resigned to II-division existence.
Gloria (Bistrita) took 3rd place wit 42 points, but was out of the race for promotion. FCM Baia-Mare and Jiul (Petrosani) fought to the end and only goal-difference divided the winner from the loser. FCM Baia-Mare lost the battle: 20 wins, 8 ties, 6 losses, 65-29, 48 points. Goal-difference: +36.
Jiul (Petrosani) clinched 1st place after 22 wins, 4 ties, 8 losses, 72-30, 48 points. Better goal-difference of +42 returned them to First Division.