cheapbag214s
Joined: 27 Jun 2013
Posts: 18472
Read: 0 topics
Warns: 0/5
Location: England
|
 Posted: Fri 2:26, 06 Sep 2013 Post subject: who
have lifted the trophy 23 times |
|
|
Think Transylvania and it is difficult to avoid the mind
wandering to the tales of vampires made famous in fiction and
folklore. However, if CFR Cluj continue on their current path, this
legendary Romanian region could be responsible for a football fairy
tale every bit as fantastic as Bram Stoker's gothic horror
story.
That is because this little-known club from Cluj-Napoca,
Transylvania's largest city, are currently on course to end
Bucharest's epic stranglehold on the Liga 1 title.
Romania's league championship has long been hoarded by a
dominant duo from the country's capital: Steaua Bucharest, [url=http://www.consumerlawissues.com/images/lingerie.html]wholesale lingerie[/url] who
have lifted the trophy 23 times, and Dinamo, who have topped the
table on 18 occasions and claimed silver on 20 more. When the
city's third force, Rapid, are added to the equation, it brings
the city's tally of top two finishes to a remarkable 88.
Almost as widely accepted as the Bucharest trio's
dominance was the view that, if any team from outside the capital
could succeed in smashing the triopoly, it was almost certain to be
Universitatea Craiova, champions in 1981 and 1991 and the only side
to wrest the title from Bucharest in the last 27 years. History,
however, could well be rewritten this season, with big-spending CFR
Cluj currently leading a championship race in which Rapid, their
closest challengers, lie five points behind with 19 matches of the
34-game season already played.
It was only in their final fixture prior to Romania's winter
break, in fact, that Ioan Andone's CFR conceded their long
unbeaten record, this just weeks after they had become the first
provincial side in 48 years to reach the halfway point of the
season without tasting defeat. It was Steagul Rosu Brasov who
managed this feat all the way back in the 1959/60 season, and
though these underdogs ultimately saw the title snatched away by
CCA Bucharest - as Steaua were then named - CFR are confident that
lightning will not strike twice.
Steaua, after all, currently lie eight points adrift in fourth,
with defending champions Dinamo a further six points back in sixth,
leaving the way clear for their unfamiliar title rivals to advance
towards an historic triumph.
A chequered history
Having celebrated their centenary last year, CFR
Cluj are hardly newcomers on the Romanian scene, but since winning
the regional Transylvanian title in their third year of existence,
they have endured decades of near-anonymity.
Prior to the last couple of years, the high-point of their
unexceptionable history had come in 1972, when they ended the Liga
1 season in fifth. It took 35 years for this best-ever [url=http://www.consumerlawissues.com/images/lingerie.html]plus size sexy lingerie[/url] finish to be
eclipsed, with much of the intervening period spent languishing in
the country's second tier. Indeed, it was as recently as
January 2002 that the turning point in CFR's history came, with
the arrival of a new financial backer in Arpad Paszkany.
At that stage, the club had been trapped in Romania's
Divizia B for fully 27 years, and it took a substantial investment
in new players in the summer of 2003 to bring about a long overdue
return to the top flight. [url=http://www.consumerlawissues.com/images/lingerie.html]sexy lingerie online[/url] Little did the club's jubilant fans
know at the time that this was to prove merely the start.
Their first season back in the big time witnessed CFR finish an
unremarkable 11th, comfortably avoiding relegation but hardly
threatening the Bucharest giants. They did, however, earn a place
in the following season's UEFA Intertoto Cup, and with former
Romanian international Dorinel Munteanu taking on the role of
player-coach, it was in this competition that they announced their
arrival as a force to be reckoned with, eliminating the likes of
Athletic Bilbao and St Etienne en route to the final.
It was only at this last hurdle that the Romanians eventually
fell - [url=http://www.centralillustration.com/shop/lingerie.html]plus size sexy lingerie[/url] RC Lens proving too strong over two legs - yet the
confidence gained from an impressive continental campaign was to
prove a springboard for the club to break into the top five back
home for the first time in over three decades. Munteanu bade
farewell all the same, but despite the change in manager, last
season brought further investment and yet more progress as a CFR
team now dominated by western Europeans and South Americans made
history by finishing third.
However, scaling new heights has clearly failed to satisfy this
ambitious Transylvanian outfit, who have once again spent big,
shelling out millions of euros for Argentinians Sebastian
Dubarbier, Sixto Peralta and Diego Ruiz and, more recently, Lars
Hirschfeld and Mikael Dorsin, both of whom starred for Rosenborg in
the UEFA Champions League.
With these signings having taken the club's
already-substantial foreign contingent to 22, the hope is that it
is CFR who will be competing at Europe's highest level next
season. Plans are also afoot to double the capacity of the
club's stadium and with a first-ever top flight title seemingly
within their grasp, this Transylvanian fairy tale might not be so
far-fetched after all.
相关的主题文章：
[url=http://bbs.gxsq.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1497629]http://bbs.gxsq.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1497629[/url]
[url=http://www.jxqylt.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2953626]http://www.jxqylt.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2953626[/url]
The post has been approved 0 times
|
|
