Romanian Football is Facing a Major Crisis

Romania's shameful elimination from Euro 2016, and also the chronic problems in the Romanian football are these days making headlines in Bucharest.

Bogdan Matei, 28.06.2016, 13:51

Nothing sparks
off more heated debates in Romania save for politics and football. If in
politics, likes and dislikes are shared between the left and the right, between
those in power and the opposition, between one politician or another, the
national football side is believed to represent all the Romanians. And everyone
seems to share the belief of a former football star, Sorin Cartu, according to
whom, we’ve had the most lackluster national team since the 70s, after the
Romanian eleven came a cropper in their attempt to qualify for the round of 16 at
EURO 2016 in France.

After conceding a one-nil defeat to Albania on June 19th,
an unprecedented result since 1948, our footballers ended up in the last
position of Group A with only one point out of three games. In the first two
matches, Romania had been outperformed by the host country 1-2, holding
Switzerland to a one-all draw in their second game. Before calling for the
resignation of the headcoach and the bosses at the Federation, Romanian sports
daily Gazeta Sporturilor wrote: ‘with
outmoded headcoach Anghel Iordanescu at the helm, our team proved to be in dire
need of a working attack strategy, putting up a show with a lot of mistakes in
the defence line and by its goalie.’

A week after
Romania’s failure at Euro 2016, the Romanian Football Federation chief, Razvan
Burleanu, has announced that the national team’s coach will not have his
contract prolonged; Iordanescu’s contract is due to expire this summer. His
replacement is to be announced by the end of EURO 2016, Burleanu has also told
a news conference in which he blamed the recent failure on the disastrous
situation inherited from his predecessor, Mircea Sandu, who withdrew in 2014
after almost half a century of discretionary rule of the federation. Burleanu
has described the situation as a ‘desert’ or a ‘swamp’, and to a certain
extent, pundits agree with him, pointing the finger at the endemic corruption
in the Romanian football, which is on the brink of bankruptcy and at the bottom
end of competitive sports.

Both Sandu and
the former head of the Professional Football League, Dumitru Dragomir are
facing corruption charges in several legal investigations. Numerous former
agents, club chairs and owners have already been placed behind bars.
Debt-burdened football clubs are struggling with insolvency and some are already
in the red. If their predecessors in the 90s were in the lineups of famous
sides such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan or Ajax Amsterdam, Romanian
international players are today substitutes of teams in the Balkans or the Persian
Gulf. However, all these are nothing but poor excuses for the lack of
professionalism of the incumbent Federation bosses, who seem to have come out
of the blue, and are being held in place with support from the political class
and the intelligence services, as newspapers speculate. Preliminaries for the
World Cup 2018 in Russia are due to begin on September 4th, and
being part of a group, which also includes Denmark, Montenegro, Armenia and
Kazahstan, Romania stands poor chances to qualify.