Patchwork of peoples
Dobrogea (usually Dobruja in English) is the region of Romania which abuts the Black Sea, stretching between the Bulgarian and Ukrainian borders. (We should more properly talk about northern Dobrogea, as the smaller southern part is today part of Bulgaria.) Dobrogea has historically been quite separate from Wallachia and Moldavia, the core provinces of the Romanian nation: only in 1913 was it incorporated into the state. As so often in south-eastern Europe, the ethnic jumble accumulated over the ages in these coastal lowlands has inflicted severe headaches upon modern rulers and boundary commissions.
After a long period as part of the medieval Bulgarian Empire, a good long while as a Byzantine outpost, and a very brief time in Wallachian hands under Mircea the Elder, Dobrogea was ruled by the Ottomans for four hundred years, until the late nineteenth century. This has left a legacy in the form of some pretty mosques, and Turkish place-names like Techirgiol and Babadag.
While in the southern part of the region lie plains, low hills, and brackish lakes, the northern end consists of the Danube Delta, a sparsely populated marshy maze of waterways where the great river ends its 2,800-kilometre journey. The delta proved the ideal hiding place for Lipovans, Russian ‘Old Believers’, who fled there in the 18th century to escape Orthodox persecution.
A curious claim
In 1878, as the modern Romanian state was first created, the delta, while de jure under Romanian sovereignty, was controlled by a European commission to protect trade and transport. Local historian Nicolae Ariton claims, startlingly, that the first football match on Romanian territory took place in the Danube Delta in 1866, several decades before any game is known to have been staged in Bucharest – or even in the then Hungarian cities of Arad, Oradea or Timisoara. This claim is based on a letter from an officer on a British gunboat guaranteeing international traffic, at anchor a few kilometres downstream from Tulcea. Make of it what you will.
At this time the largest ethnicity in Dobrogea was the Tatars (31%), followed by Romanians and Turks (21% each). Ethnic Romanians, encouraged and incentivised to move to the region, quadrupled in number in thirty years to form a slim majority. Then in 1913, after the Second Balkan War, Romania acquired southern Dobruja from Bulgaria, adding more than a quarter of a million people, mostly Bulgarians and Turks, to its population. Romanians now made up only a third of the newly expanded region, which also housed significant numbers of Pontic Greeks, Black Sea Germans, Roma and Gagauz.
The City
The largest city in Dobrogea is Constanța, Romania’s main sea port, famous in antiquity as Tomis, the place of the Roman poet Ovid’s miserable exile. It grew from a small town of 5,000 people, in 1878, to five times that size in just thirty years. Its best-known landmark today is the ornate Casino, inaugurated in 1910. The modern port opened in 1909. This same busy period saw the construction of a new central mosque, a celebrated church and two synagogues, and the beginnings of new premises for a prestigious lycee and a museum of antiquities. Though it was still only the ninth biggest town in Romania, and only half the size of the Danube ports of Galați or Brăila, Constanța was fast becoming a proper regional capital. And it was around this time that football started to take hold in the city.
The first club was Victoria, founded in 1913. Over the coming decade, each of the city’s many ethnic and religious communities would form its own club: the Greeks (Elpis), the Bulgarians (Slavia), Tatars and Turks (Chiazim), Armenians (Artiv), Hungarians (Astra), Albanians (Flaga), and Jews (Maccabi). Several Bucharest clubs, such as Tricolor and Venus, established a Constanța branch, while the docks, the lycee, the business school, the railways and the military were also represented. The municipality built a stadium in the grounds of the lycee, just off Bulevardul Tomis, in 1928; in the early 1930s Victoria got their own ground, a bit further up the road away from town, and so did Elpis, down by the port. (None of these would survive the coming war.)
But the constănțenii were behind the rest of the country in their football development, as shown by a 0-4 thrashing in a Constanța v Bucharest fixture in 1928. Thus the city champions (Victoria every year) were not invited to join the national competition until 1929-30: in that year they were drawn in a south-east regional play-off with a team from Brăila or Galați, industrial towns that had been involved in the national scene for years. In 1931 Victoria achieved Dobrogea’s first victory in the national finals round: a 1-0 win over Dacia Galați, followed up with a 2-1 against Dacia Unirea Brăila the following year. But when the league format was instituted, within a newly professional structure, in the early 1930s, Dobrogea was not considered worthy of a place in the top flight. Two Constanța teams, Victoria and Elpis, were instead placed in the second division, in a regional group with teams from Bucharest and Ploiești. Victoria won this group in 1935-36 but couldn’t get past the play-off stage. The same year saw Elpis’ demotion to the brand new third tier, and the club folded a few years later.
Constanța’s first great player
Vintila Cossini was just a teenager when he was transferred from Tricolor Constanța to CFR București (later renamed Rapid), in 1932. The combative right half became a key component of the CFR team that would win six Romanian Cups in seven years, and was an automatic pick for the national team over the same period. He became the first man from Constanța to play for Romania, in 1935, and went on to amass an impressive (for the time) 25 caps. Apparently known as “the man with no spleen”, though I’m not sure why, Cossini retired from football at 28, as war came to Romania, and became an engineer. He died in 2000.
Post-war
Southern Dobruja was returned to Bulgaria by the Axis in 1940, accompanied by a population exchange between the two countries.
In 1946, in the turmoil following the end of the war, Victoria – now known as AS Constanța – was dissolved. Dezrobirea (“Emancipation”), a dock-workers’ team, was given a place in Divizia B, joined the following year by the waterworks club PCA. The PCA team was coached by Ștefan Wetzer, a championship winner with Juventus in 1930 and former team-mate of Cossini’s at CFR Bucharest. Among the PCA players was a certain Gogu Cojocaru, the source for much of this historical material and the first man to score for a Constanța team in the top flight. Dezrobirea boasted on their bench Ștefan’s more famous brother Rudy, who had captained Romania at the 1930 World Cup.
Dezrobirea won the division in 1947-48, only missing out on promotion in the play-off, while PCA were relegated. The two teams merged, but the new entity, although coached by another famous timișorean, former Romania hotshot Ștefan Dobay, was demoted the following year to Divizia C. 1948 also saw a new stadium opened next to the port, where the club, under its new name Locomotiva, would make its home for the next
Glory days
Top-level football finally came to the shore of the Black Sea in 1955, when Locomotiva Constanța won promotion, under the guidance of yet another 1930 World Cup player, Costicǎ Stanciu. Locomotiva had spent just one year in B on the way back up from the county league. (Such was the administrative mayhem that in 1949 Divizia C had been cancelled while they were supposed to be in it.)
In the new municipal stadium, they lasted only one season in the top flight, on the first go. But then they were renamed Farul, after the Genoese lighthouse that still stands by the Casino. The new-look club promptly won Divizia B in 1957-58, and the city was back in the big time. 1959-60 saw Farul achieve a remarkable fourth-place finish, with (after a brief break in the second division) a fifth-place in 1962-63, and fourth again in 1966-67. (For some of this time the head coach was Petre Steinbach, a man – it won’t surprise you – who was from Timișoara and who had represented Romania at the 1930 World Cup.) What’s more, a thriving youth setup yielded two consecutive national under-19 championships in the early ’60s. As befitted a city that was now as big as Galați or Brașov, Constanța was no longer a footballing backwater.
In 1965-66 the club was invited to participate in the Balkan Cup, their first ever continental competition. Farul topped a group featuring Olympiakos, Spartak Plovdiv and Vardar Skopje, but lost the final over two legs against rather less exotic opposition, Rapid București. They contested the following two editions of the Balkan Cup, too, but were unable to maintain such a standard, going out in the group stage.
A long-overdue rebrand to FC Constanța inspired yet another fourth place finish in 1973-74, and another crack at the Balkan Cup (though they fared no better this time). Decline set in, however; they went down in 1978, and changed their name back to Farul in 1988. This, of course, proved just the ticket: from 1988 until relegation in 2009, the club spent only one season outside the top flight; in that time they also reached two Cup semi-finals and one final.
Decline
After several seasons in the 2010s battling against relegation to the third division, catastrophe came in 2016 as the club announced its bankruptcy. A phoenix club was established in the lower leagues, and worked its way up. Former Romania striker Ciprian Marica bought the old club’s brand at auction for just under 50,000 euros and formed another new Farul in the fourth division. After delicate negotiations the original phoenix agreed to let him become their major shareholder. In 2021 this version of Farul, by now in the second tier, merged with Gheorghe Hagi’s top-flight FC Viitorul (see below), and the club now competes in Liga 1 as Farul once more. They currently (2022-23) play home games at the tiny Viitorul stadium in Ovidiu while Stadionul Farul is being rebuilt.
Heroes
In 1963 young striker Marin Tufan arrived at Farul from nearby minnows Cimentul Medgidia. He would go on to be picked for Romania’s 1970 World Cup squad and remains Farul’s all-time record scorer in the top division. Full-back Mihai Mocanu came through the ranks at Locomotiva Constanța, but spent his prime in Ploiești, winning the 1965-66 league title with Petrolul, and earned 31 caps for Romania.
Iosif Bükössy was a forward from Transylvania who starred for Farul in their mid-’60s heyday, alongside Tufan. He finished his playing career in 1972 and became a coach at Farul. He is credited with nurturing the city’s greatest ever footballing talent, Gheorghe Hagi – more on him later. Bükössy also nurtured another mercurial attacking player from an Aromanian family in Constanța, Ianis Zicu. Zicu started at Farul but actually turned professional at Dinamo București, making his league debut in 2001 aged 17. He was sold to Internazionale in 2003, shortly after his full international debut, but never made it in Italy and came back the following year. He finished with 12 caps, 3 league titles with Dinamo, and cup-winner’s medals from 4 clubs in 3 countries. In his ultimately unfulfilled and itinerant career, he only once played more than 40 games in any one stint, and that was (oddly) at Gangwon in South Korea.
The King
Gheorghe Hagi was born in the small Dobrogea village of Săcele, 40 km north of Constanța, in 1965. He is an ethnic Aromanian whose grandfather, a shepherd, had emigrated from Greece. Hagi spent only one season in the senior team at FC Constanța (aka Farul) before moving to Bucharest aged eighteen, in 1983 – though his transfer was controversial, as this article explains. He made his international debut the same year, and the rest, as they say…
In a long, often frustrating, but undeniably glittering career, “Gică” played for Romania a (then) record 124 times, between 1983 and 2000, scoring a record 35 goals; he appeared at three World Cups and three European championships; he represented both Real Madrid and Barcelona; he scored the winner in the final of the European Super Cup, on his debut for Steaua; he captained Galatasaray as they won the UEFA Cup; he was voted Romanian player of the year a record seven times (and Turkish player of the year twice); he was selected in the 1994 World Cup All Star Team; he was twice top scorer in the Romanian league – from midfield. Even though he represented Steaua for just three seasons, he remains among the club’s all-time top 10 goalscorers.
And, yes, he had a tendency to get himself sent off at inopportune moments: the last qualifier for the 1990 World Cup; the European championship quarter-final; the final of the UEFA Cup. But he was the spark that lit up the Golden Generation.
FC Viitorul
After an initially short and patchy coaching career, in 2009 he set up his own youth football school in Ovidiu, a small town on the road out from Constanța towards his home village. The “Academia de Fotbal Gheorghe Hagi” was intended to address a culture of short-termism in the country’s football scene: the big clubs overlooked youth development in favour of a quick, cheap fix from abroad, as part of a wider attitude to the game that involved flogging it for every leu. Though he was not the first to notice, in the late 1990s Hagi was a vocal critic of the problem, with a famous outburst at a press conference shortly before the 1998 World Cup. The aging Golden Generation had just squeaked a friendly win over Paraguay and the press were displeased. “Romanian football is on the way out. In two or three years, it’ll be nothing!” Hagi’s words seem to have hung in the air ever since – and Romania have yet to make it to another World Cup.
Intended as a shop window to sell young players on to bigger clubs, the Hagi academy’s first team, Viitorul (“the Future”), started competing in Liga 3 in 2009; by 2012 they had already won promotion to the top flight. After a couple of seasons of struggle, Hagi appointed himself coach in 2014. The club took advantage of the implosions of its competitors and finished fifth the next year, earning a first European qualification. Then, in 2016-17 Viitorul did the unthinkable and won the league title, with a squad whose average age was a shade over 22! A cup win in 2019 and two Romanian Coach of the Year awards mean that the King’s mantelpiece is more crowded than ever.
But the main aim of his project was arguably even more of a success than the first team. Romania’s 23-man U21 squad that reached a European semifinal in 2019 featured six Viitorul players and four more graduates of the Hagi Academy. Graduates include, but are not limited to:
- Alexandru Stoian (made his Liga 1 debut aged 14 years in 2022)
- Enes Sali (youngest ever Liga 1 goalscorer; made debut for Romania in 2021, aged 15)
- Cristian Manea (local lad who has won five league titles with CFR Cluj by the age of 25)
- Răzvan Marin (currently playing in Serie A; 44 caps for Romania by age 26)
- Alex Mitriță (earned $9m move to New York City)
- Ianis Hagi (son of Gheorghe; currently a success at Rangers)
- Florinel Coman (captain of FCSB by age 24)
- Florin Tănase (Liga 1 top scorer for the past two seasons, for FCSB)
- Boban Nikolov (48 caps for Macedonia; played at Euro 2020; played for Sheriff Tiraspol when they beat Real Madrid)
Other clubs
Beyond Constanța, Dobrogea is mostly a land dotted with small, sleepy towns. A few teams have made an impression on the national football scene, however. For instance, the 2011-12 season saw no fewer than five clubs from Dobrogea in the 32-team second tier: Farul and newly-promoted Viitorul, plus Delta Tulcea, Callatis Mangalia, and Săgeata Năvodari, whose story exemplifies Romanian football in the 2000s.
Săgeata Năvodari: originally based in the village of Stejaru, in summer 2009 the club’s ‘investors’ bought CS Buftea’s place in Liga 2 for half a million euros. One year later the owners ditched Stejaru and took their registration to create a new club Săgeata Năvodari, in a coastal town just north of Constanta. (The local club had recently gone bust after the Petromidia oil refinery withdrew funding). After two near misses the club won promotion to Liga 1 in 2013, appointing Tibor Selymes (of Golden Generation fame) as manager. He was replaced after only a few months by local boy Catalin Anghel, who couldn’t save them from relegation and then they went bankrupt. A fun-filled five years…
Other notable teams from the region include Portul Constanța (for which Iosif Bukossy both played and coached), Cimentul Medgidia, CS Ovidiu
Wrong sport
Farul’s rugby section were, in the amateur days, one of the most successful teams outside the capital, their record of six league titles and one cup win having been overhauled by Baia Mare only recently. Farul contested the first ever Heineken Cup match in 1995: they lost 54-10 to Stade Toulousain.
Whisper it… My enthusiastic write-up notwithstanding, Gheorghe Hagi is arguably not even Constanta’s winningest sportsperson… She’s spent 64 weeks ranked number one in the world, she’s won the Wimbledon and French Open titles and reached three other Grand Slam singles finals; she’s earned $40 million. She is also from an Aromanian family…. She is Simona Halep!
romaniaballs 