Groundhopping24

Think of Romanian football, and what's the first thing that springs to mind? Adrian Mutu? The bleached hair of France '98? Andrei Ratiu's blue hair at Euro 2024? Perhaps even the fact that two clubs are at war over who owns the Steaua Bucharest name, or the fact the same seems to be true of Universitea Craiova who also have two clubs? Rather than get into the gritty details of both of these cases, both of which seem well-documented elsewhere (if you can wrap your head around the insanity), I wanted to explore the country firsthand and take in a few games while out there. It was a frustrating wait for the fixtures around the weekend of the 15th February to be announced, given that my priority was seeing my Football Manager darlings, Dinamo Bucharest. I saw that Farul Constanta, some two and half hours away on the Black Sea coast, were also playing on the Monday of the previous weekend, meaning I could turn a potential weekender into a full week exploring two Romanian cities....

  It's often said that January goes on forever, and if you happen to enjoy attending football matches and live in Central Europe, a truer word could not be spoken. At least those in England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, wherever else have the luxury of football to attend. Here, you've got the occasional friendly but little else worth making the effort for. Having said that, there is some mild regret at my having not attended Admira Wacker 4-5 Horn in a mid-season battle between top and bottom of the Austrian 2nd tier. But still, hey ho... Since I last wrote on my wonderfully enjoyable adventures in Celje back in December, I've seen a grand total of three matches - all with my beloved and very  mid-table (at the time) Stevenage side. This is best summarised by the fact I saw a 0-3 defeat (Wycombe at home), a 3-0 win (Bristol Rovers at home), and of course a goalless draw (Lincoln away). I did briefly think about writing a piece on Stevenage and my response to these game...

Ah, the Europa Conference League. I'm genuinely going to call it the best of the three European tournaments, despite it being the tertiary competition. And yes, I know it will be a shock if anyone other than Chelsea wins the whole thing, but where else can you see teams from the likes of Northern Ireland, Wales (technically), and even Iceland rub shoulders with the likes of Chelsea, Panathanaikos and, errm...Mlada Boleslav? In this, my second exposure to this wonderful mish-mash of European sides, I venture south to Celje in Slovenia to watch (technically) Welsh side The New Saints come up against Celje. Both sides have it all to play for with a win highly likely to secure qualification for Celje, though TNS need a win to stand a chance.  As for my one prior Europa Conference League experience, it was a delightful Thursday night in Trnava, in which Spartak Trnava hosted Danish side Nordsjaelland, losing 2-0 on the night to a side worth about ten times their entire squad. Though I d...

  Back in April 2023, I took my first of what would be three trips to Trenčín via the convenient FlixBus from Brno, though the fact the FlixBus back wouldn't be 'til the following day meant a night in the city, as for whatever reason I didn't feel the need to look for any trains back that evening in lieu of the absent buses. That said, I wasn't complaining given that during that weekend, it quickly became one of my favourite Slovak cities and somewhere I would return to. Firstly there's the magnificent castle, visible from the stadium depending on where you happen to be sat. I couldn't see it from there on my second visit back in September of the same year, which was actually to take in a Trenčín game, but I've had the pleasure of visiting the castle itself and experiencing the majestic skyline from the great height that the castle sits upon.  The first visit was for a game between nearby Dubnica nad Váhom and Košice, which the away side duly won 1-2, with b...

Following two trips that spanned entire weekends to Prague and Gyor respectively, this weekend would allow for Saturday to be a rare free day of absolutely nothing. On Sunday, however, I would take a seemingly now annual December pilgrimage to my favourite place in Czech football, Sigma Olomouc, hence the despicably awful blog title. Apologies. As my first experience of Czech football, and despite my allegiances to Zbrojovka Brno, I can't help but hold the obligatory soft spot for Sigma Olomouc. That first game was a 1-0 success over Slovan Liberec, which I have written about some time ago . It wasn't the most entertaining of games, but at the point, the novelty of watching football in another country was still very much there. At the time, I also had no idea what would unfold in the coming months and years in terms of my moving to the Czech Republic. As a result, returning always feels somewhat special. The reason I chose to go to Sigma Olomouc was essentially on the back of a...

As if crossing just the one border isn't exciting enough, this weekend allowed me the opportunity to cross two. After realising that Hungarian first tier football is now pretty close to Brno geographically, I booked a 6.25am Flixbus to Győr on the Saturday, with the return at 6.25pm on the Sunday. At the time of booking, I saw the early start as a bridge to cross when I got there, but surprisingly when that bridge came, it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Though buses are infrequent (at least the cheap ones seem to be), Brno to Győr takes a mere three hours, with a good chunk of that spent static at Bratislava bus station. As for bridges themselves, Győr seemed to have plenty, as well as many other wonderfully charming aspects to make this a bit of a hidden gem. Being in between the likes of Prague, Bratislava and Budapest, it might be fair to say not too many people make the stop in Győr. In fact, its population is actually lower than that of Stevenage, but I'd sooner spen...