Romanian Odyssey Part One: To the lighthouse (Farul Constanta)
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....