Sports weekend

Florin Orban, 16.07.2021, 13:15

The
first part of Romania’s Olympic team flew to Japan on Thursday. The athletes were
on board a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, charter flight, and it took them 13 hours
to land in Tokyo. The Henri Coanda International Airport’s Official Salon was
the venue for the boarding operations. On board the plane were pools of
regulars for 3-on-3 basketball, boxing, football, judo, fencing, table tennis and
archery. Among other officials, seeing the Romanian athletes to the boarding
gate was the president of the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee, Mihai
Covaliu. We recall Covaliu was the Olympic champion in the Sydney 2000
Olympics, Sydney in 2000, in the individual saber event.

Romanian
League One’s domestic football championship kickstarted on Thursday. FC
Botosani held FCSB to a blank draw at home. We recall FCSB are the vice
champions in the previous competition season. The guest team had the upper hand
throughout the game, yet FCSB wasted a string of opportunities to score and
Botosani’s goalie Eduard Pap even denied FCSB the chance to score from a
penalty kick on 61 minutes, a chance wasted by FCSB’s Florin Tanase. The latter
team were granted the penalty kick as Alin Seroni’s tackling of Octavian
Popescu was rated as foul play. The game was also the debut match for FCSB’s
new head-coach, Dinu Todoran.

On
Friday, Sepsi Sfantu Gheorghe face Academica Clinceni. Also on Friday, CFR Cluj
take on FCU Craiova. On Saturday in Medias, western Romania, the local side Gaz
Metan take on the newly-promoted team FC Mioveni, while in Craiova, in the
south, Universitatea go against Fc Arges. On Sunday, in Arad, the local team
UTA are pitted against Farul Constanta. Also on Sunday, the newly-promoted
team, Rapid Bucharest play Chindia Targoviste, in a fixture hosted by the
National Arena in Bucharest. The last match as part of the new competition season’s
first round, pitting Dinamo Bucharest against FC Voluntari, is scheduled on
Monday.

(Translation by Eugen Nasta)