Victor Pițurcă

Victor Pițurcă

Pițurcă in June 2014
Personal information
Date of birth	(1956-05-08) 8 May 1956 (age 65)
Place of birth	Orodel, Romania
Height	1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Position(s)	Striker
Youth career
1970–1974	Universitatea Craiova
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1974–1975	Dinamo Slatina	10	(3)
1975–1977	Universitatea Craiova	8	(0)
1977–1978	Pandurii Târgu Jiu	13	(4)
1978–1979	Drobeta-Turnu Severin	15	(5)
1979–1983	Olt Scornicești	98	(28)
1983–1989	Steaua București	174	(137)
1989–1990	Racing Club de Lens	28	(4)
Total		346	(181)
National team
1985–1987	Romania	13	(6)
Teams managed
1992	Steaua București
1994–1995	FC U Craiova
1996–1998	Romania U–21
1998–1999	Romania
2000–2003	Steaua București
2003–2004	FCSB
2004–2009	Romania
2010	FCSB
2010	FC U Craiova
2011–2014	Romania
2014–2015	Al-Ittihad
2015–2016	Al-Ittihad
2019–2020	Universitatea Craiova
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only

Victor Pițurcă (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈviktor piˈt͡surkə]; born 8 May 1956) is a Romanian former professional football player and current manager. He is nicknamed "Satana" (Satan) by the press, something he calls remarkable.^[1]

Club career[]

Pițurcă was born in Orodel, Dolj County. He joined Universitatea Craiova as a youth in 1970, aged 14, and four years later he was loaned to Dinamo Slatina, a club from Romania's Liga II, in order to gain more experience, before being called back to Craiova in 1975, making his debut for the team in November that year.

As he was not used much by Universitatea, Pițurcă left the club in 1977 to join Pandurii Târgu Jiu and then FC Drobeta Turnu-Severin, from where he was signed by FC Olt, thus returning to play in Liga I.

In 1983, he was requested by Steaua, helping the club to reach its highest peak in European football.

Pițurcă won with Steaua the European Cup in 1986, the European Super Cup in 1987, and was the semi-finalist in the same competition losing to Benfica in 1988. During the 1988–89 season the team reached the European Cup final again, but lost to Milan. As for domestic performances, Pițurcă won the championship with Steaua București five times and the Romanian Cup four times.

At the end of the 1987–88 season he was the top scorer of Liga I and won UEFA's Bronze Boot.

A very funny moment happened in 1989 during the European Cup semi-final played by Steaua against Galatasaray in İzmir when the Turkish side's goalkeeper relieved the ball hitting Pițurcă's back and from there the ball went straight into the goal. However, the goal was not validated because the referee did not see what happened.^[2]

On 25 March 2008, he was awarded the Ordinul "Meritul Sportiv" medal — (The Order "The Merit for Sports Achievement") class II by the president of Romania, Traian Băsescu for his part in winning the 1986 European Cup Final.

International career[]

Despite being a prolific striker, Pițurcă only won 13 caps for Romania, scoring six times.

#	Date	Venue	Opponent	Score	Result	Competition
1	4 June 1986	23 August Stadium, Bucharest, Romania	Norway	1–0	3–1	Friendly
2	4 June 1986	23 August Stadium, Bucharest, Romania	Norway	2–0	3–1	Friendly
3	8 October 1986	Ramat Gan Stadium, Israel	Israel	1–1	4–2	Friendly
4	8 October 1986	Ramat Gan Stadium, Israel	Israel	4–1	4–2	Friendly
5	25 March 1987	Stadionul Steaua, Bucharest, Romania	Albania	1–0	5–1	UEFA Euro 1988 qualification
6	29 April 1987	Stadionul Steaua, Bucharest, Romania	Spain	1–0	3–1	UEFA Euro 1988 qualification

Career as coach[]

After playing for Racing Club de Lens during the 1989–90 season, Pițurcă called it a day and retired from professional football to take over as coach. His first appointment was with Steaua București in 1991, followed by another one with Universitatea Craiova in 1994, finishing second in the championship at the end of 1994–95 season.

In 1996, he was named coach of the Romania Under 21 side, leading the team to its best performances ever, including a qualification to the Under 21 European Championship in 1998, hosted by Romania.

In 1998, he was appointed as Romania's manager and qualified the team to the 2000 European Football Championship. However, despite finishing the qualification group undefetead, Pițurcă was sacked before even taking his squad to the Euro 2000. The reason was an argument he had had with Romania's best players, Gheorghe Hagi and Gheorghe Popescu, both managed by Ioan Becali. Becali was Pițurcă's worst enemy because Pițurcă did not want to promote the players he managed to the national team, but he was great friends with Romanian Football Federation president Mircea Sandu.

In December 1999 he took over as manager of Steaua București, winning the championship in 2001, but resigned in 2004 after an argument with the club's chairman, Gigi Becali, who wanted to sack a player whom Pițurcă wanted to keep on the team.

In December 2004 he was appointed manager of Romania for the second time. At first Romania did well under his coaching, defeating several important European teams both in friendlies (Germany, Spain) and official matches (Czech Republic in Group 1 of the 2006 FIFA World Cup Qualification and the Netherlands in Group G of the UEFA 2008 Qualifying Round).

After topping their qualifying group (and thus qualifying for their first international tournament in 8 years), Romania was drawn in Group C at UEFA Euro 2008, alongside the Netherlands, Italy and France. At the time of the draw, these countries' respective Elo rankings among European teams were 1st, 2nd, 4th and 8th, and as such the group has been dubbed the competition's "group of death". After drawing their first two games against the finalists of the previous World Cup (0–0 against France, 1–1 against Italy), Romania lost 0–2 to the Netherlands, finishing the group in third place and thus being eliminated from the competition.

After Euro 2008, Romania showed an increasingly poor form in both friendly games and the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign, where they had a slow start. In their first two official games after Euro 2008, Romania lost 0–3 against Lithuania at home and four days later secured a difficult 1–0 victory against the Faeroe Islands. Although many of the players which helped Romania qualify for the Euro 2008 missed these two matches, this was not accepted as a reasonable excuse for the extremely poor results by the Romanian media and public opinion. The next official match, against France, was considered decisive for Romania's qualification chances. Despite managing only a 2–2 tie, the team's performance was generally deemed satisfactory, and Pițurcă was offered one last chance to remain coach of the national team: to win both of the next two games in the qualifying group, against Serbia and Austria, within a four-day timespan. Romania eventually lost both matches (3–2 on 28 March 2009 against Serbia at home, 2–1 on 1 April against Austria away).

Considering Romania's extremely poor performances in 2008 and 2009, the Romanian Football Federation released Victor Pițurcă from his job from the Romania national team on 9 April 2009. A few weeks later, Răzvan Lucescu was appointed as his successor.

In 2010, he had two short spells as manager at FCSB and Universitatea Craiova.

On 14 June 2011, he returned for a third spell in charge of the Romanian national team.

On 16 October 2014, he left the Romanian national team to sign a two-year deal with Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia.^[3] In January 2015, he was heavily criticized for excluding Al-Ittihad's top stars Mohammed Noor and Hamad Al-Montashari due to disobeying training procedure. As of today, Noor has missed over 10 league matches, which was considered by Saudi journalists "way too far" for a punishment considering he is Al-Ittihad's longest tenured and most accomplished player. On 4 April 2015 before the decisive match between Al-Ittihad and Al-Nassr, Pițurcă was seen shaking hands with Noor. On 10 May 2015, after four months, Noor and Al-Montashari returned.

Finally at the end of the season, Piturca's contract with Al-Ittihad was dismissed after a disappointing season, as he couldn't succeed to keep the team on the top three teams of the Saudi Premier league table. In addition, he failed to pass the semi-final round in the Saudi King's Cup.

On 22 August 2019, he signed a contract with his youth club Universitatea Craiova for 3 years. He resigned in January 2020.^[4]

Personal life[]

At Steaua București and FC U Craiova he coached his son, Alexandru who was a striker.^[5][6][7] He is the cousin of Eugen Neagoe.^[8][9]

Honours[]

Player[]

Steaua Bucharest

• Romanian League (5): 1984–85, 1985–86, 1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89
• Romanian Cup: 1984–85, 1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89
• European Cup: 1985–86; Runner-up: 1988–89
• European Supercup: 1986

Individual[]

• Divizia A Top Scorer: 1987–88 (34 goals)
• European Bronze Boot: 1987–88^[10]

Manager[]

Steaua Bucharest

• Divizia A: 2000–01
• Romanian Cup: 1991–92
• Supercupa României: 2001

Managerial statistics[]

As of 17 March 2020

Team	Nat	From	To	Record
				G	W	D	L	Win %
Universitatea Craiova		1994	1995	34	21	5	8	061.76
Romania		1998	1999	16	9	6	1	056.25
Steaua București		2000	2002	60	32	14	14	053.33
Steaua București		2002	2004	52	31	15	6	059.62
Romania		2004	2009	46	27	7	12	058.70
Steaua București		2010	2010	2	2	0	0	100.00
Universitatea Craiova		2010	2010	16	7	3	6	043.75
Romania		2011	2014	36	18	10	8	050.00
Al-Ittihad		2014	2015	23	12	4	7	052.17
Al-Ittihad		2015	2016	26	14	5	7	053.85
Universitatea Craiova		2019	2020	16	8	3	5	050.00
Total				311	173	69	69	055.63

References[]

External links[]

• Victor Pițurcă at National-Football-Teams.com
• Victor Pițurcă at RomanianSoccer.ro (in Romanian) and StatisticsFootball.com
• Profile at SteauaFC.com (in Romanian)

Sporting positions
Preceded by Marius Lăcătuș	Steaua Top Scorer 1984–1985 1985–1986 1986–1987 1987–1988	Succeeded by Gheorghe Hagi