Where the team has no name: the fight over Steaua Bucharest’s identity

A farcical dispute between their owner and the army is threatening to rob Romania’s 1986 European Cup winners of their famous, storied past

• Steaua Bucharest stripped of name, colours and emblem

”The decision taken in court came as a shock for all of us. We can’t understand what’s happening, we are absolutely speechless. What’s going on?” Steaua Bucharest’s “Hero of Seville” in the 1986 European Cup final, Helmuth Duckadam, now an ambassador for the Romanian club, perfectly summarised the atmosphere after his team ceased to exist as the world knew it. Earlier this month, on 3 December, the supreme court in Romania ruled that the registration of the Steaua brand made by the club’s multimillionaire owner Gigi Becali in 2004, one year after taking over the club, was illegal. So every symbol related to Steaua’s identity was returned to the Romanian defence ministry’s possession with immediate effect: a football club with no name, colours or crest .

Steaua Bucharest Football Club, created in the communist era and controlled by the army, had become an independent company in 1998, nine years after the Romanian revolution and the collapse of Nicolae Ceausescu’s dictatorship.

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source Sport | The Guardian http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/34708/f/666716/s/41ce34a7/sc/8/l/0L0Stheguardian0N0Cfootball0Cblog0C20A140Cdec0C270Csteaua0Ebucharest0Eromania0Eeuropean0Ecup/story01.htm