Victor Pițurcă

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Victor Piţurcă
Personal information
Date of birth (1956-05-08) 8 May 1956
Place of birthOrodel, Romania
Height1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Playing positionStriker
Club information
Current clubRomania (manager)
Youth career
1970–1974Universitatea Craiova
Senior career*
YearsTeamApps†(Gls)†
1974–1975Dinamo Slatina10(3)
1975–1977Universitatea Craiova8(0)
1977–1978Pandurii Târgu Jiu13(4)
1978–1979Drobeta-Turnu Severin15(5)
1979–1983Olt Scorniceşti98(28)
1983–1989Steaua Bucureşti174(137)
1989–1990Racing Club de Lens28(4)
Total346(181)
National team
1985–1987Romania13(6)
Teams managed
1991–1992Steaua Bucureşti (assistant)
1992Steaua Bucureşti
1994–1995Universitatea Craiova
1996–1998Romania U–21
1998–1999Romania
2000–2002Steaua Bucureşti
2002–2004Steaua Bucureşti
2004–2009Romania
2010Steaua Bucureşti
2010Universitatea Craiova
2011–Romania
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.
† Appearances (Goals).

Victor Piţurcă (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈviktor piˈt͡surkə]; born 8 May 1956 in Orodel, Dolj County) is a Romanian former football player and current manager of the Romanian national team.

Club career

Piţurcă was one of the prolific strikers of Steaua Bucureşti, being one of the team's top scorers – he scored 137 goals in 174 league games. During their European Cup winning season, Piţurcă scored five goals in nine games, including one of the fastest goals ever scored in an official football game – the goal scored in the 36th second of the game against Budapest Honvéd.

He joined Universitatea Craiova as a youth in 1970, aged 14, and four years later he was loaned to Dinamo Slatina, a club from Romania's Liga II, in order to gain more experience, before being called back to Craiova in 1975, making his debut for the team in November that year.

As he was not used much by Universitatea, Piţurcă left the club in 1977 to join Pandurii Târgu Jiu and then FC Drobeta Turnu-Severin, from where he was signed by FC Olt, thus returning to play in Liga I.

In 1983 he was requested by Steaua, helping the club to reach its highest peak in European football.

Piţurcă won with Steaua the European Cup in 1986, the European Supercup in 1987, and was semifinalist in the same competition losing to Benfica in 1988. During the 1988-89 season the team reached again the European Cup final, but loses to Milan. As for domestic performances, Piţurcă won the championship with Steaua Bucureşti five times and the Romanian Cup four times.

At the end of the 1987–88 season he was the top scorer of Liga I and won UEFA's Bronze Boot.

A very funny moment happened in 1989 during the European Cup semifinal played by Steaua Bucureşti against Galatasaray in İzmir when the Turkish side's goalkeeper relieved the ball hitting Piţurcă's back and from there the ball went straight into the goal. However, the goal was not validated because the referee did not see what happened.[1]

On 25 March 2008 he was awarded the Ordinul "Meritul Sportiv" medal — (The Order "The Merit for Sports Achievement") class II by the president of Romania, Traian Băsescu for his part in winning the of 1986 European Cup Final.

International career

Despite being a prolific striker, Piţurcă only won 13 caps for Romania, scoring six times.

# Date Venue Opponent Score Result Competition
1 4 June 1986 23 August Stadium, Bucharest, Romania  Norway 1–0 3–1 Friendly
2 4 June 1986 23 August Stadium, Bucharest, Romania  Norway 2–0 3–1 Friendly
3 8 October 1986 Ramat Gan Stadium, Israel  Israel 1–1 4–2 Friendly
4 8 October 1986 Ramat Gan Stadium, Israel  Israel 4–1 4–2 Friendly
5 25 March 1987 Stadionul Steaua, Bucharest, Romania  Albania 1–0 5–1 UEFA Euro 1988 Qual.
6 29 April 1987 Stadionul Steaua, Bucharest, Romania  Spain 1–0 3–1 UEFA Euro 1988 Qual.

Career as coach

After playing for Racing Club de Lens during the 1989–90 season, Piţurcă called it a day and retired from professional football to take over as coach. His first appointment was with Steaua Bucureşti in 1991, followed by another one with Universitatea Craiova in 1994, finishing second in the championship at the end of 1994–95 season.

In 1996 he was named coach of the Romania Under 21 side, leading the team to its best performances ever, including a qualification to the Under 21 European Championship in 1998, hosted by Romania.

In 1998 he was appointed as Romania's manager and qualified the team to the 2000 European Football Championship. However, despite finishing the qualification group undefetead, Piţurcă was sacked before even taking his squad to the Euro 2000. The reason was an argument he had had with Romania's best players, Gheorghe Hagi and Gheorghe Popescu, both managed by Ioan Becali. Becali was Piţurcă's worst enemy because Piţurcă did not want to promote the players he managed to the national team, but he was great friends with Romanian Football Federation president Mircea Sandu.

In December 1999 he took over as manager of Steaua Bucureşti, winning the championship in 2001, but resigned in 2004 after an argument with the club's chairman, Gigi Becali, who wanted to sack a player whom Piţurcă wanted to keep on the team.

In December 2004 he was appointed manager of Romania for the second time. At first Romania did well under his coaching, defeating several important European teams both in friendlies (Germany, Spain) and official matches (Czech Republic in Group 1 of the 2006 FIFA World Cup Qualification and the Netherlands in Group G of the UEFA 2008 Qualifying Round).

After topping their qualifying group (and thus qualifying for their first international tournament in 8 years), Romania was drawn in Group C at UEFA Euro 2008, alongside the Netherlands, Italy and France. At the time of the draw, these countries' respective Elo rankings among European teams were 1st, 2nd, 4th and 8th, and as such the group has been dubbed the competition's "group of death". After drawing their first two games against the finalists of the previous World Cup (0–0 against France, 1–1 against Italy), Romania lost 0–2 to the Netherlands, finishing the group in third place and thus being eliminated from the competition.

After Euro 2008, Romania showed an increasingly poor form in both friendly games and the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign, where they had an almost unprecedented slow start. In their first two official games after Euro 2008, Romania lost 0–3 against Lithuania at home and four days later secured a difficult 1–0 victory against the Faeroe Islands. Although many of the players which helped Romania qualify for the Euro 2008 missed these two matches, this was not accepted as a reasonable excuse for the extremely poor results by the Romanian media and public opinion. The next official match, against France, was considered decisive for Romania's qualification chances. Despite managing only a 2–2 tie, the team's performance was generally deemed satisfactory, and Piţurcă was offered one last chance to remain coach of the national team: to win both of the next two games in the qualifying group, against Serbia and Austria, within a four day timespan. Romania eventually lost both matches (2–3 on 28 March 2009 against Serbia at home, 1–2 on 1 April against Austria away).

Considering Romania's extremely poor performances in 2008 and 2009, the Romanian Football Federation released Victor Piţurcă from his job from the Romania national team on 9 April 2009.[2] A few weeks later, Răzvan Lucescu was appointed as his successor.

In 2010, he had two short spells as manager at Steaua Bucureşti and Universitatea Craiova.

On 14 June 2011, he returned for a third spell in charge of the Romanian national team.

Honours

Player
  • Romanian League: 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989
  • Romanian Cup: 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989
  • European Supercup: 1986
  • European Cup: 1985-86
    • Runner-up: 1988-89
Manager

Managerial statistics

As of 19 November 2013.
Team Nat From To Record
GWDLWin %
Universitatea Craiova Romania 1994 1995 34 21 5 8 61.76
Romania Romania 1998 1999 16 9 6 1 56.25
Steaua Bucureşti Romania 2000 2002 60 32 14 14 53.33
Steaua Bucureşti Romania 2002 2004 52 31 15 6 59.62
Romania Romania 2004 2009 46 27 7 12 58.70
Steaua Bucureşti Romania 2010 2010 2 2 0 0 100.000
Universitatea Craiova Romania 2010 2010 16 7 3 6 43.75
Romania Romania 2011 Present 28 14 8 6 50.00
Total 254 143 58 53 56.30

Notes

  1. ↑ Piţurcă against Galatasaray 1989; YouTube
  2. ↑ Trainer der Fußball-Nationalelf Rumäniens entlassen

References

Sporting positions
Preceded by
Marius Lăcătuş		 Steaua Top Scorer
1984–1985
1985–1986
1986–1987
1987–1988 		Succeeded by
Gheorghe Hagi
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.