The battle for Steaua Bucharest
In the Romanian capital, a famous old club is at war with itself…

Words:
James YoungImages:
10pm at the National Arena, Bucharest. It’s a smart, modern stadium. There’s a jumbotron similar to Schalke’s Veltins Arena, a retractable roof, and it was where Switzerland dumped out France during Euro 2020. Tonight is a 50,000 sell-out as FCSB take on Manchester United in the Europa League. The ultras of FCSB reveal a stunning tribute to Helmut Duckadam, the dark-eyed, moustachioed hero when Steaua Bucharest beat Barcelona on penalties in the 1986 European Cup final.
It was the peak of Romanian club football under Nicolae Ceauşescu’s brutal communist regime, and the game tonight is a rare opportunity for the club to rub shoulders with the continent’s elite again. But, there is no Steaua branding inside the stadium, the swag sellers outside sell scarfs and pins with FCSB on, the kits have a totally different badge, and I’m asked by Romanian television reporters if I know that FCSB (pronounced fu-ch-so-bay) and Steaua are now two separate sides.
According to the courts, the lineage of that legendary team now belongs to someone else. Not FCSB, but CSA Steaua, a team currently playing in the second division. They are not allowed to even get promoted to the top flight currently but own the badge, the name and anything else Steaua-related after a bitter legal battle.
Welcome to Romania and the fight for Steaua.
It’s been 35 years now since the Iron Curtain fell. Romania joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union three years later, and there is hope that another step towards integration with the West—joining the Eurozone—will be completed by 2029. In my hotel, there is a photo on the wall of the Manhattan skyline and a book titled 50 Big Money Businesses You Can Start and Run with $250 to $5000—fitting for a generation of Romanians who were born after Ceausescu and for whom the regime feels like a strange dream.
It was actually the British who introduced Romania to football. The Bucharest architect Gheorghe Radu Stânculescu discovered in the archives of the British Navy that English sailors were playing football in the Danube area in 1865. By 1907, the first official football match in the Kingdom of Romania was played in Bucharest on an improvised pitch by English and Germans employed in the textile or oil industry.
According to the courts, the lineage of that legendary team now belongs to someone else
After the Second World War, under communist rule, the Army Sports Association was formed in 1947. A football team was set up, a team that eventually became Steaua (Star) in 1961. Dinamo, their rivals, were the Ministry for Internal Affairs. Swiftly, Steaua became dominant in Romanian football, winning six titles in 10 years and being mainstays in Europe.
However, as communism fell, the club began to haemorrhage talent. Gheorghe Hagi, Dan Petrescu and Marius Lăcătuș all left within three years of one another, each enticed by the riches and rewards on offer in Western Europe. By 1998, the football club was forced to separate from the army due to new league rules, dropping CSA (Army Sports Club) from their name.
Steaua were then bought out by Gigi Becali, an extremist politician with repugnant views who received a suspended prison sentence for corruption in 2013. Regardless, his initial investment saw an upturn in fortunes, with Steaua reaching the 2006 UEFA Cup semifinals.

However, the army claimed that documents were faked when Becali bought the club, and in 2011, legal action had started. Three years later, a Romanian court ruled against Becali, saying he did not have the right to use the Steaua branding or claim its history and honours. In response, he changed the name to FCSB and rebranded the club from top to bottom.
In 2017, a new team, CSA Steaua, legally reclaimed the football team. They now play in the second division at the former Steaua home stadium, with fans and ex-players split over which team to support. It’s a complicated mess, and things are far from resolved.