Ionuţ Rada

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Personal information
Ionuţ Rada
Full name	Ionuţ Alin Rada
Date of birth	July 6, 1982 (1982-07-06) (age 25)
Place of birth	Craiova, Romania
Height	1.90 m (6 ft 3 in)
Playing position	Left Back, Centre Back
Club information
Current club	Steaua Bucureşti
Number	5
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
2000-2001 2001-2002 2001-2004 2004-2005 2004-2005 2005-2007 2007-	Universitatea Craiova AS Rocar Bucureşti Universitatea Craiova Rapid Bucureşti FC Naţional Bucureşti Rapid Bucureşti Steaua Bucureşti	04 00(0) 013 0(0) 042 0(1) 013 0(0) 014 0(2) 052 0(3) 017 0(1)
National team²
2003-	Romania	02 00(0)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of November 30, 2007. ² National team caps and goals correct as of July 1st, 2007. * Appearances (Goals)

Ionuţ Alin Rada, (born 6 July 1982 in Craiova) is a Romanian football player. His position on the pitch is central defender. He currently plays for Steaua Bucuresti.

1 Club career
2 International career
3 Career honours/achievements
4 External links

[edit] Club career

[edit] Universitatea Craiova

Rada started his career playing for Universitatea Craiova's youth team and also Gheorghe Popescu's famous football school from Craiova.

He debuted in Liga I for Universitatea Craiova playing only 4 matches being loaned to AS Rocar Bucureşti.

He returned to Universitatea Craiova and played there until 2004, scoring 1 goal in 42 appearances.

[edit] AS Rocar Bucureşti

He played for AS Rocar Bucureşti 13 matches but didn't manage to score any goals. He was then brought back to Universitatea Craiova

[edit] Rapid Bucuresti

In 2004 he joined Rapid Bucuresti along with his teammate from Universitatea Craiova, Ionut Stancu. From Rapid he was loaned one season to Progresul Bucuresti, where he gained 14 appearances and scored 2 goals, one of the two goals was against his current team Steaua Bucuresti. That goal made Walter Zenga, Steaua's manager at that time, resign.

On 27 July 2006 Rada suffered an injury and missed the start of the season. He spent a month under treatment at the Isokinetic clinic in Bologna.

He was left out of the team for the first time in 26 November 2006 by Razvan Lucescu because of his performance against Mladá Boleslav in the UEFA Cup.

George Copos, Rapid's owner, increased Rada's salary from €60.000 to €120.000 on 21 February 2007, due to his good performance. He was one of the lowest paid players from Rapid until his salary was doubled.

He played for Rapid in 65 matches and scored 3 goals. His best performance at this club was the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup.

[edit] Steaua Bucuresti

Ionuţ Rada signed with Steaua Bucuresti on 25 July 2007 for 3 years. Steaua Bucuresti transferred him for a known fee of €800.000 but because the player was 50% owned by former Romanian football player Gheorghe Popescu, the club had to pay him another €800.000 thus resulting a total transfer fee of €1.600.000. Popescu said that he was mainly responsible for Rada's transfer to Steaua.

He was put on the transfer list by his former club Rapid because the fans believed that the player didn’t give a 100% for the respective club. With his agreement and with the acknowledgment of George Copos he was put on the transfer list.

Rada's currently wins €120.000 per season, but he said that the money is not important to him because it was his dream to play for Steaua in the Uefa Champions League. He was sure that he made the right choice because he also had offers from other teams.

He scored his first goal for Steaua against FC Vaslui in the current season of Liga I. He scored with a perfect header from a corner kick served by Banel Nicolita. The match ended with the score 1-0 for Steaua and so Ionuţ Rada brought all the points for his team.

He made his debut in the Uefa Champions League group stage against Slavia Prague, match lost by Steaua with 2-1.