Match fixing in Romanian football

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Match fixing in Romanian football is called blat (plural blaturi).

This term is specifically used in the football domestic competition called Divizia A to explain a friendly agreement between two or more presidents of football clubs for fixing matches. Etymologically blat means "dough" and a term for designing clandestine travelling in a city bus (has no plural form). So a blatăr fixes matches and a blatist travels without a bus ticket.

[edit] Origin

Blats are more related with the period before the Romanian Revolution of 1989 when football clubs were forced to yield the points or let the two great teams of Army (Steaua) and Police (Dinamo Bucharest) win. The Comunist local and central administration had a decisive role in designating the teams who will play in the next season in the first division. Hence presidents agreed to help each other to avoid elimination from the first division. This informal and dirty association was called cooperativa (first used in 1992 by the famous former footballer and current football analyst Cornel Dinu from a term who designated the Communist system of agricultural common association) and was composed by 3 or maximum 5 influential presidents. In 1995 Dumitru Dragomir, a former president of Victoria Bucarest football team and the actual chief of the domestic league LPF admitted that during the 80`s he was directly involved in such deals.

Blat is also used by a term of "reciprocity" where two football chiefs accept that each of their team to win their home match in a direct confrontation of domestic champion round.

[edit] In the 1990s

After Communism collapsed the phenomenon of Blat was related to the development of informal economy. Many football chiefs, especially outside Bucharest, agreed to create an informal association between 3 or 5 chiefs with the aim of helping each other and involved other teams to join this "gang". That method consist in letting each of the involved teams to win the home matches, accepting to lose the away matches. Another trick was, when one team get enough points to insure permanence in the first division, the president agreed to give the points to another team from the cartel in direr straits. The most prolific football club chief who was the creator of this cartel is Jean Padureanu (also known as The Lord), president of Gloria Bistriţa, also known as the Father of Blaturi. The list includes Gheorghe Ştefan (also known as Pinalti), president of Ceahlăul Piatra Neamţ, and Romeo Paşcu (also known as Breakdance), president of FC Braşov. During 1999 and 2001 the team of Rocar owned by former Securitate officer and Ceauşescu bodyguard Gheorghe (Gigi) Netoiu was "crowned" as "champion of blaturi"^{[citation needed]}. The consequences were very disastrous for Romania club football. Despite the Romania national football team of Gheorghe Hagi being a successful team, many of the players were very reluctant to make a fair play in the competitive game because the president used to instruct their players to lose the matches. Many parents did not send their children to start a football career and many spectators and TV football watchers were disgusted and would not watch the Romanian Championship. In European cups due to this practice the Romanian participant teams were eliminated in the first rounds because they never tasted real competition. The blat era between 1992 and 2002 was a decade of decadence for Romanian football.

[edit] Press campaign for eradication

The Football press had a decisive role fighting this phenomenon. During these years there was no punitive measure taken by central football authority organisms like FRF or LPF to stop it. After the Romanian football was ranked as the cheapest and one of the less spectacular championships in the world^{[citation needed]}, many presidents decided to forego these agreements and to start playing competitively again. In 2003 after losing qualification for the second final football tournament, the president of the club FCM Bacău Dumitru Sechelariu admitted on a live football talk show equally that he was strongly involved in fixed matches and that there was an association of two or three presidents who did the same, proposing to stop these practice. This was a turning and a decisive point in the eradication of the blat policy. After that, the number of fixed matches decreased and many domestic championship results were again the consequence of fair matches. The press admitted that 2005-2006 European cup brilliant season of Romanian teams was a normal consequence of eradication of blaturi due to a strong and long anti-blat campaign.