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| FOOTBALL CLUBS IN BUCHAREST IN THE MID 1940s |
| (2007-12-21) |
| Last updated: 2007-12-21 18:59 EET |
Before the advent of communism in Romania, there had been a few sports clubs with very well defined identity. The capital, Bucharest boasted a series of clubs with an impressive domestic and international record. Other cities like Timisoara, Cluj, Brasov, Sibiu, Ploiest, Iasi and Constantsa also had teams which could successfully rival with those in Bucharest.
Olimpia was Bucharest’s first football team, set up in 1904 by a bunch of foreign and Romanian young people, among whom Swiss student Mario Gebauer, who in 1885 brought the first ball to Romania. Olimpia was also the team of Theodor Davila, writer Alexandru Davila’s son. After WW II Olimpia changed it name into Olimpia-Rhein, and became a neighborhood squad, which couldn’t even make it into the first league. Olimpia gave two footballers to Romania’s national team at its first participation into a world football championship. Ilie Subasanu and Corel Robe played in the world championship in Uruguay in 1930.
Another notable club from Bucharest was Colentina, founded in April 1909 at the initiative of several workers and officials of the “Colentina” cotton factory. Most of the players were English as the company was an English joint venture. The team began having poorer performances in 1915 because the English left Romania. Despite its attempts at a comeback between the two world wars, Olimpia was overshadowed by its neighborhood rival team, Unirea Tricolor.
Unirea Tricolor Bucuresti was founded in 1914 by a group of students from Obor neighborhood. Initially they called “Teiul” then they changed the name into Tricolor. In 1926 the club merged with another neighborhood club, Unirea. They won the national championship only once in 1941. They were the favorite team of the legionnaires, that is, the extreme right movement in Romania. In 1947 it became the team of the Minister of the Interior and in 1948, following a merger with Ciocanul, it changed its name into Dinamo Bucharest.
The most popular team in Bucharest is Rapid, which was founded in 1923 by a group of workers from the Romanian Railways. In 1936 they started building a stadium for the team. The stadium was called Grant, it was shaped like a horse-shoe, inspired by the stadium of English team Arsenal London. Rapid were 4 times national champions and gave such legendary players like Baratki and Stefan Wetzer.
Bucharest also had its own Juventus. The club was born in 1924 after a merger between Triumf and Romcomit, two smaller teams. The president of the club was Italian Ettore Brunelli, who was also general manager of an oil refinery in Ploiesti, near Bucharest. Juventus Bucuresti won Romania’s championship once in 1930 and it was the team of Rudy Wetzer, the captain of the national team. He wrote a memorable diary of Romania’s first participation in the world championship of 1930. In 1951 Juventus Bucharest ceased to exist.
The Romanian capital had a Jewish district, which had its own football club named Maccabi Bucuresti. This team gave the goalkeeper of the national team of Romania at its first participation in the world championship in Uruguay. Unfortunately 1930 was the last year of existence of this team, which was dissolved due to anti-Semitic pressure. After the Second World War, Maccabi took the name of Ciocanul, which merged with Unirea Tricolor, which was ironically the team of the far right and later, the team of the Romanian Minister of Interior.
Carmen Bucuresti was the team of famous Romanian entrepreneur Dumitru Mociornita, in the mid 1930s. Without notable results the team was withdrawn from the first league in 1947 to make room for the team of the army, Steaua Bucharest. Besides his being one of Romania’s richest people, Dumitru Mociornita is famous for his refusal to let his team play against Dinamo Tbilisi to avoid a defeat by a soviet team.
Between 1944 and 1947 the communist authorities put constant pressure on all private teams. The communists wanted to dissolve these teams to make room for so-called worker’s clubs, to attract the masses to the communist leadership. But those new teams had no identity and no tradition. All differences were effaced by the ideology of a false social equality.
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