History of Steaua Bucharest
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Steaua Bucharest is the only Romanian football team, and the first in Eastern Europe, to win the European Champions Cup in 1986. They also won the European Supercup in 1987.
Alongside the two European thophies, Steaua won 23 National Football Championships (being the only team to have won more than 20 championships), 20 Romanian Cups and 5 Romanian Supercups.
The European football acknowledge Steaua as the best Eastern European football club alongside Crvena Zvezda Beograd and Dynamo Kyiv.
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[edit] European Cup Winners
Steaua won the European Champions Cup final played on May 7, 1986 against FC Barcelona at the Estadio Sanchez Pizjuan stadium in Seville, after a penalty shoot-out. Six out of eight penalties were saved by the goalkeepers. Marius Lăcătuş and Gavril Balint were the only two players to score. The final is also remembered for Helmuth Duckadam's (Steaua's goalkeeper) performance, who saved four penalties. Steaua won 2-0.
To reach the final Steaua played against Vejle BK of Denmark in the first round, qualifying after a 1-1 away result and 4-1 home win, Budapest Honvéd FC of Hungary in the second round, 0-1 away and 4-1 at home, Kuusysi Lahti of Finland in the quarter-finals, 0-0 at home and 1-0 away, and then RSC Anderlecht of Belgium, 0-1 away and 3-0 at home in the semi-finals.
Steaua Bucharest vs FC Barcelona 0 : 0 (2 : 0 after the penalty shootout), Seville, May 7, 1986, European Champions Cup Final
- Steaua Bucharest: Helmuth Duckadam - Ştefan Iovan (c), Miodrag Belodedici, Adrian Bumbescu, Ilie Bărbulescu - Gavril Balint, Lucian Bălan (75' Anghel Iordănescu), Ladislau Bölöni, Mihail Majearu - Marius Lăcătuş, Victor Piţurcă (107' Marin Radu II). Coach: Emerich Jenei
- FC Barcelona: Urruti - Gerardo, Migueli, José Ramón Alexanko, Julio Alberto - Víctor, Marcos Alonso, Bernd Schuster (85' Moratalla), Ángel Pedraza - Steve Archibald (106' Pichi Alonso), Carrasco. Coach: Terry Venables
- Scorers: -; Penalties: (0-0) Majearu (save), (0-0) Alexanko (save), (0-0) Bölöni (save), (0-0) Pedraza (save), 1-0 Lăcătuş, (1-0) Alonzo (save), 2-0 Balint, (2-0) Marcos (save)
[edit] History
[edit] Early Years (1947-1949)
On June 7, 1947, at the initiative of several officers of the Romanian Royal House, the first Romanian sports club of the Army is born through a decree signed by General Mihail Lascăr, High Commander of the Romanian Royal Army. The club was to be called ASA Bucureşti (Asociaţia Sportivă a Armatei Bucureşti –English: The Army Sports Association), with a single section, that of football, and was entrusted for leadership to General-Major Oreste Alexandrescu. The decision had been adopted on the ground that several officers were already playing for different teams, which was premise to a good nucleus for forming a future competitive team. With this squad, Coloman Braun-Bogdan, the first coach in the club’s history, went to a sustained training camp in the mountain resort of Sinaia. Although shirts, boots and balls were missing, atmosphere inside the team was rather optimistic. Thanks to sustained efforts, in the shortest possible time the club soon acquired the first training suits, navy green, duck material of, and the first shirts, blue. The big surprise however were the 40 pairs of boots the club had purchased for the 20 selected players.
With the squad gathered in record time, ASA was preparing itself for the Romanian second league promotion play-offs. However, the new Communist government who had come to power in 1946 and assumed total control of the country at the end of 1947, stated that every sports association in the country was of new to be linked to a certain State Department, Ministry or company. This was not, however the case for first league club Carmen Bucureşti, owned by wealthy industrialist Dumitru Mociorniţă, who saw his team excluded from the championship and later on dissembled. Its place was now taken by newly-formed ASA, who was later on to be reinforced by players of defunct Carmen itself.
The team’s first official competition was the 1947-48 Romanian Football Championship season, which they ended 14th. Their first official match was played in Bucharest against Dermata Cluj and ended 0-0. The team managed to avoid relegation after a play-out with seven other teams.
On June 5, 1948, through Order 289 of the Ministry of National Defence, ASA transforms into CSCA (Clubul Sportiv Central al Armatei – English: The Army Central Sports Club), after which performances begin to roll.
In 1949, CSCA wins its first trophy in history, the Romanian Cup, after defeating CSU Cluj (current Universitatea Cluj) 2-1 in the final. Because of the championship’s pass to the Soviet inspiration spring-fall system, which lasted from 1950 to 1956, CSCA played in that year’s fall in an unofficial competition called “The Autumn Cup”, held in six different groups, without a final tournament, and won one of them.
[edit] CCA Golden Team (1949-1961)
At short time after winning their first ever trophy, CSCA changed names again, this time to CCA (Casa Centrală a Armatei – English : The Army Central House).
Under the new name, the club would enter the high-life of Romanian football by winning their first Championship - Cup Double in 1951, not before conquering their second national cup one year earlier after trailing 3-1 past Flamura Roşie Arad. The first title was achieved on goal average (which was then used as a second criterion instead of goal difference), while the cup by disposing 3-1 of Flacăra Mediaş in the final. Two subsequent titles followed consecutively after that year and another one in 1956, thanks to a squad that now comprised Iosif Petschovsky, a great player also recognized for his high spirit of Fair-Play. The team also won the Romanian Cup in 1952 (2-0 v Flacăra Ploieşti) and 1955 (6-3 v Progresul Oradea - current FC Bihor Oradea).
The 1950s were years of great domestic performances, ones in which the club’s first Golden Team crystallized itself, a team which sometimes confused itself with the National Team of Romania itself, with players such as goalkeeper Ion Voinescu, defenders Vasile Zavoda and Alexandru Apolzan, midfielders Ştefan Onisie and Tiberiu Bone or strikers Gheorghe Cacoveanu, Gheorghe Constantin, Ion Alecsandrescu, Francisc Zavoda and Nicolae Tătaru directed by Technical Consultant Virgil Economu and coaches Ilie Savu and Ştefan Dobay. 1956 was one of the CCA’s most prestigious years, when, apart from winning the title, the team enterprised a tournament in England where they beat Luton Town FC 4-3 (which they had already beaten 5-1 in a friendly in Bucharest one year earlier), drew against Arsenal FC 1-1 and Sheffield United FC 3-3 and lost 5-0 in front of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC. Also, on April 22, 1956, the Romanian national team beat Yugoslavia 1-0 in Belgrade with a team comprised only by CCA players.
1957 was the year Romania switched back to the fall-spring system and in whose spring CCA participated in the Danube Cup, being knocked out by MTK Budapest in the first round and also the one in which the team made their first European Cup appearance, outpassed by BV Borussia Dortmund in the European Champions Cup after a 3rd match play-off in Bologna.
[edit] A New Star (1961-1985)
In 1961, after having won the previous two national titles, CCA changes names once again for the final time to CSA Steaua Bucureşti (Clubul Sportiv al Armatei Steaua – English: The Army Sports Club Steaua). The name "Steaua" is Romanian for The Star and was adopted because of the presence, just like in any other Eastern-European Army team, of a red star (turned to yellow now) on their badge.
On April 9, 1974, Steaua’s current home, the Ghencea Stadium, is inaugurated with a friendly match opposing OFK Beograd that ended 2-2. The arena was something new for Romania, as it was built especially for football, with a capacity of 30,000 and with no athletics track. Up to that date, Steaua had played its home matches on either two of Bucharest’s largest stadiums, Republicii and 23 August (present-day Lia Manoliu Stadium).
Internally, fierce rivalry with teams like Dinamo Bucharest, Petrolul Ploieşti and UTA Arad made the military team reach the title harder and harder, the 7th and 8th decades seeing them win the title only three times under their new name (1967-68, 1975-76, 1977-78). However, during that same period, Steaua won several National Cups, eight in number (1961-62, 1965-66, 1966-67, 1968-69, 1969-70, 1970-71, 1975-76 and 1978-79), ultimately being nicknamed The Cup Specialists.
The first half of the 1980s was very poor to the club, as no trophies were won for six years. However, several prodigies were transferred, such as Helmuth Duckadam, Ştefan Iovan, Miodrag Belodedici, Marius Lăcătuş, Victor Piţurcă, Mihail Majearu, Gavril Balint or Adrian Bumbescu, who set the basis for the future team. These years of search and fluster did however no less than to foretell the amazing performances of the 9th and 10th decades.
[edit] Second Golden Team (1985-1989)
Under the command of coaches Emerich Jenei and Anghel Iordănescu, Steaua had an impressive Championship run in the 1984-85 season, which they eventually won after a six-year break. What followed was an absolutely astonishing European Cup season. After knocking-out Vejle BK, Honved FC, Kuusysi Lahti FC and RSC Anderlecht, they were the first ever Romanian team to make it into a European Cup final. On May 7, 1986, at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan in Seville, Spanish champions FC Barcelona were clear favourites, but after a goalless draw, legendary goalkeeper Helmuth Duckadam saved all four penalties taken by the Spaniards being the first ever Romanian to reach the Guinness Book for that matter, while Gavril Balint and Marius Lăcătuş transformed theirs to make Steaua the first Eastern-European team to conquer the supreme European trophy.
Gheorghe Hagi, the Romanian all-time best footballer, joined the club a few months later, scoring the only goal of the match against Dinamo Kiev which brought Steaua an additional European Super Cup on February 24, 1987 in Monaco, just two months after having lost the Intercontinental Cup 1-0 to Argentinians CA River Plate in Tokyo.
Surprisingly for the ones who saw these performances as something isolate, Steaua remained at the top of European football for the rest of the decade, managing one more European Cup semifinal against SL Benfica (1987-88) and one more European Cup final in 1989, which was lost 4-0 in front of Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard’s AC Milan, next to their four more national titles (1985-86, 1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89) and four national cups (1984-85, 1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89). In addition, from June 1986 to September 1989, Steaua ran a record 104-match undefeated streak in the championship, which by that time was a new world record.
[edit] Post-Revolution Era (1990-2002)
The 1989 Romanian Revolution led the country towards a free open-market and subsequently, several players of the great team of the 1980s left for bigger clubs in the West. Gheorghe Hagi went to Real Madrid CF for a record $ 4,300,000 fee which stands up to this day for the national championship, Marius Lăcătuş to AC Fiorentina, Dan Petrescu to Foggia Calcio, Silviu Lung to CD Logrones, Ştefan Iovan to Brighton & Hove Albion FC and so on.
Therefore, three years followed in which the club only won a national cup in the 1991-92 season. A swift recovery followed though and Steaua managed a six consecutive championship streak between 1992-93 and 1997-98 to equalize the 1920s performance of Chinezul Timişoara and also three more cups in 1995-96, 1996-97 and 1998-99. Another record highly regarded by the fans was the eight year and six month long undefeatead streak in front of arch-rivals FC Dinamo Bucureşti, which counted 19 matches in both the championship and the Romanian Cup. Also, Dinamo have yet to beat Steaua at Ghencea in the league since September 1989.
At the international level, the club managed to reach the Cup Winners' Cup quarter-finals in 1993, when they lost on away goals to Royal Antwerp FC, and also to make it to the UEFA Champions League group stage three years in a row between 1994 and 1996.
In 1998, following lobby of football department president, Marcel Puşcaş, the football club separated from the CSA (the entire sports club) and changed their name for the last time to Fotbal Club Steaua Bucureşti, being led by Romanian businessman Viorel Păunescu.
[edit] George Becali Takeover (2002-Present)
Viorel Păunescu performed poorly as a president and soon the club was plunged into debt. Despite the title won in 2000-01, George Becali, another businessman, was offered the position of vice-president, in the hope that he would invest money in the club. Becali purchased 51% of the club’s shares in February 2002 and turned the governing company into SA (Romanian equivalent for PLC) on 1 March 2002. Even though contested by many because of his controversial character which saw him turn to politics further on, Becali has so far had inspired management plans for the club, also helped by Chief Executive Mihai Stoica.
In the summer of 2004, following a third consecutive year with no trophy won, former Italian glory Walter Zenga was appointed as head coach, becoming the first ever foreign Steaua technician. Following the appoitment the results came immediately, as the team qualified for the UEFA Cup group stage and further on became the first Romanian team to make it to the European football spring since 1993 (also Steaua’s performance), where they surprisingly outpassed holders Valencia CF after a dramatic penalty shootout at Ghencea. Walter Zenga was sacked with three matchdays to go in the Romanian league, but Steaua eventually won the title, a performance repeated the following year, when, under coaches Oleg Protasov (July – December) and Cosmin Olăroiu (January – present), they also managed to make it to the UEFA Cup semifinals (dramatically knocked out by Middlesbrough FC after having eliminated local rivals Rapid Bucureşti in an epic all-Romanian quarter final) and to win the Romanian Supercup (1-0 against the same AFC Rapid Bucureşti in July 2006), the latter being the club’s 50th trophy in its 59 year-old history.
After successfully passed two qualifying rounds, playing against NK Gorica and Standard Liège, Steaua reached the group stage of the 2006-07 UEFA Champions League after many years of absence.
