FCSB or Steaua Bucharest: Who are Manchester United's Europa League opponents?

New York Times

29-01-2025

Helmut Duckadam, the man who saved four penalties in the 1986 European Cup final, died last month.
The celebrated Romanian goalkeeper was a hero in his homeland, but he broke Barcelona's hearts with his saves. The Catalans, managed by Terry Venables and featuring Bernd Schuster and Steve Archibald, were strong favourites to lift a first European Cup. The final was in Seville and, given Steaua Bucharest were behind the Iron Curtain in Cold War Europe, all but a handful in the 70,000-crowd supported Barcelona.
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Duckadam shattered their dreams and, in the 38 years since Steaua's triumph, only one other team from Eastern Europe — Red Star Belgrade (now known as Crvena zvezda) — have won Europe's top competition.
Steaua Bucharest still exist. They play in a smart new government-owned 30,000 seater stadium not far from where Duckadam lived in the western parts of the city. They have passionate fans and play in the second division. Yet Duckadam and many Romanians consider Steaua Bucharest to be FCSB — Manchester United's hosts on Thursday in the Europa League, a 53,000 sell-out with tickets going for 10 times their £10 ($12.40) face value.
Welcome to a seemingly never-ending argument about who owns the history of Romania's most successful club. In Manchester, FC United of Manchester fans sing 'Two Uniteds but the soul is one', but in Bucharest it's the battle for that soul which has caused so much angst and numerous legal disputes.
When Duckadam died, his body lay for 24 hours in the National Arena where United will play Thursday's fixture. Fans from both clubs went to honour him but, while the two clubs have mutual respect for a national hero, relations between them are all but non-existent and feelings acrimonious.
So which is the real Steaua Bucharest?
Google 'Steaua Bucharest' and you are sent to a page titled FCSB. 'This article is about the club officially named FCSB,' it reads. 'For the other team claiming to be the legal successor of the original Steaua Bucuresti and affiliated with the multi-sport club and the army, see CSA Steaua București (football). For other uses, see Steaua București (disambiguation).'
Click on the latter link and you're sent to a page listing the many sports played by Steaua Bucharest. At the bottom, there's a link to 'FCSB, a football club formerly illegally named FC Steaua Bucuresti'.
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The fixtures detailed on the FCSB page are from Romania's SuperLiga. The accompanying Wikipedia listing takes you to: 'Fotbal Club FCSB, formerly Fotbal Club Steaua Bucuresti and sometimes colloquially known simply as Steaua'. Wiki is open to misuse and their entry has been changed to: 'The team now known as Fotbal Club FCSB pretended to be Steaua. However, it was not.'
Confused? You will be. So who exactly are Manchester United playing?
Back in August 2016, in the Champions League qualification play-offs, Manchester City confronted a team of whom few had heard. On UEFA's official website the team was listed as 'FCSB', yet on the BBC the result was recorded as 'Steaua Bucharest 0 Manchester City 5'. It wasn't much of a story until a tweet went viral from that game, supposedly from the account of Romania's top division.
'Here's the thing ‪@ManCity‬‬‬‬‬‬fans!' it read. 'You support a club bought with oil money made illegally! You have no history! You just have money!'
As it was an unofficial account the tweet was quickly forgotten having served its purpose online, but the point about history is an interesting one.
'Here's a simple explanation since it's very complex,' the former Romania international Florin Gardos, once of Southampton, tells The Athletic. 'The current owner of FCSB, Mr (Gigi) Becali, bought the club after 2000. In the late 1990s, clubs in Europe had to be owned by private owners. The club Steaua was originally owned by the Ministry of Defence. They had to sell it; he bought it. Then 16 years later, there was a court ruling saying that Mr Becali doesn't own the logo or the brand and that everything would have to go back to the Ministry of Defence.
'The Ministry of Defence owns Steaua and they created a senior club starting in the fourth league with amateurs. They rose to the second league and have been there for a few years. But because of the Romanian Sports Law rules, they can't be promoted since they're effectively owned by the government.
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'There has been a separation of fans. A lot of fans are with FCSB, including me, because there was a club which changed their name overnight but they were the same. FCSB is the biggest brand in Romanian football with the best average attendance and huge crowds for European games.
'When I played, there was a study which said they had 5million fans in Romania. Now the fans are a bit separated. Most are with FCSB but I work as a pundit and I'm not allowed to say 'Steaua' on television. I have to say 'FCSB' all the time, initials which don't mean anything on paper. And for the other club, it's 'Steaua'; they have the brand and the logo.'
Could the two ever meet?
'They could play in a cup, but Steaua can't be promoted until they become a privately owned club. But I hear that people might be afraid to buy the 51 per cent (stake) because what happened to Becali could happen again. A lot of people don't think that public money should go on a professional team.'
Gigi Becali is a 66-year-old Romanian businessman and nationalist politician who returned to politics last year. He has just been elected as a member of the Romanian Parliament for AUR, a conservative party with some controversial views on how the country should governed.
Becali originally obtained 51 per cent of Steaua shares and added a further batch of 15 per cent before his wealth was impounded by the National Fiscal Authority (ANAF) in 2005. He appealed, won and avoided paying back taxes because he transferred the assets of Steaua Bucharest to a new company, FC Steaua Bucharest. Becali had bought the Steaua name of the club which was founded in 1947, but was not allowed to sell it or transfer it.
The army also asked for $38million (£30.6m) for what they called the illegal use of the brand. They didn't get it. Romania's Ministry of Defence sued in 2011 claiming that the Army were the rightful owners of Steaua's logo, colours, name and honours. In 2017, judges made Becali's club change their name to FCSB.
Becali was a member of the European Parliament for three years until 2012. Outspoken, controversial and lampooned in the Romanian media as an uneducated Silvio Berlusconi-type figure for his background as a shepherd, Becali is wealthy and powerful. He thrived after the fall of communism in the 1989 Romanian revolution and was on the Shareholders' Council at Steaua.
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At least until 2020, FCSB's website stated: 'In 1998, the football team was separated from the Army's club, based on decisions of FIFA and UEFA, that stated that no club supported by the government should participate in professional competitions. Also, in 2003, the club became totally private.'
On the website, the club referred to themselves as 'Steaua' throughout — referred because it is no longer online. FCSB are not allowed to say they are the owners of the historical record, yet UEFA recognises FCSB as the continuators of Steaua and credits them with winning the 1986 European Cup.
A week before 2020's Covid lockdowns, The Athletic went to see Duckadam and his wife at their home. He offered whiskey and we sat in the sunshine by a football and a pair of goalkeeper gloves bearing his initials and the No 86.
He was wonderful company as he explained how the win in 1986 came a few weeks after the Chernobyl disaster, when domestic football was suspended, how Valentin, the son of (former communist dictator) Nicolae Ceausescu, fixed it for his team to train under floodlights amid electricity cuts, and how they knew little of Barcelona, bar watching a VHS video, smuggled to them by a journalist, of Venables' team beating Goteborg on penalties in the semi-final.
Steaua wore a white kit with no badge which they'd been given the night before. Duckadam wore modern gloves for the first time in a game and guarded them so closely that he slept with them. Barcelona's players said nothing to him after the game, but when Steaua played City in the 2016 Champions League qualifier, their officials Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano told him that the people of Barcelona would never forgive him. Pep Guardiola confessed that he never thought Barca would lose that game.
Yet the trophy which Duckadam's heroics secured was, according to him, held by the wrong club.
'I work for FCSB,' was how Duckadam explained his role as a club ambassador of a team who most Romanians recognise as Steaua Bucharest. But legally, they're not. 'It's not fair that the smaller team has the trophies which we won.' He didn't want to speak ill, but it was clearly a deeply emotive and divisive issue.
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'Duckadam was the only one from the players who won the European Cup to be of that view,' Adrian Popa, a current Steaua player and one of very few to have played for both clubs, tells The Athletic. 'He was a paid employee of FCSB. He worked for Becali, a very powerful and influential man in Romania. Most of his team-mates work at Steaua.
'It's clear and simple. The courts have decided who is Steaua Bucharest and who isn't. Steaua are the historical club that won the European Cup in '86 and FCSB, who I used to play for, are a company. They are two different entities. They pretend they are Steaua or that they continued the old club, but it's not true. The history and the name belong to Steaua Bucharest, who I now play for.
'We're not affected by them (FCSB). I play for Steaua Bucharest, the greatest-ever Romanian team — not FCSB. The judge has decided that the history and name is ours.'
Asked to describe the relationship between the two clubs, Popa adds: 'There is no relationship. We can't call it a war but we can say that they don't respect court decisions. They are also very powerful in the media and all the structures. Steaua belongs to the country; it wasn't legal to buy.'
'Players and former players are divided, but respect each other,' says Gardos. 'And even worse, if I post something on social media about the subject, the fans who support the team from the second league swear and speak bad of me. Fifteen years ago, everyone was in the same stadium and I was loved. Now, the fans are separated and much more radical.'
Both Gardos, who retired in 2023, and Popa are 36. 'At the moment, we don't have the right to progress to the top league because of the legislation in Romania (preventing state-owned clubs from playing in the top division),' says Popa. 'We are the only country in Europe with this kind of legislation. There would have to be changes if we are to be allowed to play in the first league.
'I would love to play against them (FCSB). There was a game in the third division during Covid so behind closed doors. Their second team and our first. They sent some of their first-team regulars. It was 1-1.
'I really hope that we get a chance to be promoted. We are in second place. If the law is changed, we can be promoted. It would be a dream for me to play in the first league with Steaua — I would play one game and then I would retire from football.'
'I started coming to Steaua (now FCSB) when I was eight and I later played for them (from 2012-17 when they were still called Steaua Bucharest),' adds Popa. 'I respect that I played my best moments in football with them, but this is life. For many years, I thought the whole thing was a misunderstanding, but when the decision from the court came it was clear to me who was who.
'FCSB have a lot of fans because when they play in the first league and play European games. Fans want to see Manchester United and not teams from the second league, that's normal. But we are Steaua.'