Article by Maria Olteanu – Published Thursday, October 30, 2025, 4:57 p.m. / Updated Thursday, October 30, 2025, 4:57 p.m.
It was the second stage of the 2019 – 2020 competitive season, the 25th minute of the game at the National Arena, when Eugen Neagoe fainted on the bench, while Dynamo fans were chanting against him, demanding his resignation, immediately after he had been installed in office. In the first stage, Dinamo lost miserably against Viitorul, score 0-5.
Neagoe succumbed to the pressure and the evening at the country's biggest stadium turned into a nightmare. However, the intervention of the medical team was prompt, and the technician was stabilized on the field and then urgently transported to the Floreasca hospital. Even though it was initially thought to be a heart attack, the diagnosis received was cardio-respiratory arrest, and Neagoe was fitted with a pacemaker.
More than six years after that extremely delicate and complicated moment, Neagoe told about the minutes that preceded the cardio-respiratory arrest, but also what he felt as soon as he arrived in the ambulance.
VIDEO. Eugen Neagoe, about the moments before the cardio-respiratory arrest: “He took my pulse, after that I didn't know anymore”
“It was a cardio-respiratory arrest, not a heart attack! I suffered exactly what Christian Eriksen suffered. After that I found out, because I didn't know… I was hospitalized at Floreasca Hospital for two days, after that some formidable people kept taking me for tests, because they didn't know what happened to me. I had clean vessels… I didn't have a heart attack. I did this cardio-respiratory arrest on, please, the “electrical side”.
To see, yes, at a match with Craiova… You know very well how we grew up in Craiova. Dynamo was the team with which there was the greatest rivalry. Not against Stella! Dinamo was public enemy number 1.
From second 1, the gallery did not agree with me. I know very well everything that happened. Those guys in the gallery, who ran the gallery, were set up by… Please, it doesn't matter which person. I really don't care… That was fate! The game didn't even start and they whistled me. The boys were mounted. But about the dead … only for good”, Neagoe explained about the moments that preceded the cardio-respiratory arrest.
Asked if he still remembers the moment at the stadium, Neagoe added: “Absolutely everything. Sure! There were fractions of a second when I don't remember. Including when I asked Dr. Bătineanu for water, because I was feeling dizzy, I didn't have any pain at all, I had absolutely nothing. It was just fractions of a second… I felt when the dizziness was coming, I was standing on the edge of the field. I sat on the bench and told the doctor to give me some water, because I was dizzy. He it took my pulse, and after that, of course, I didn't know.
I'm back in Save. Prunea came to Salvăria's door and talked to me, I told her to take care of the boys. I know absolutely everything and now I remember perfectly what we discussed.
They put a pacemaker in me in the hospital. It's under the skin, it didn't bother me at all. For six years or so I haven't had any problems,” added Neagoe.
What restriction did the doctors put on him after that moment
Once at the hospital, Neagoe received only one recommendation from the doctors: “The doctors' request was to quit smoking. I was smoking a pack or so a day. I smoked the last cigarette right before the match with Craiova. So in 2019. I'm going for check-ups every six months,” said Neagoe.
After that terrible moment, Neagoe left Dinamo: “Unfortunate in all respects that period. If I had known what was to come, I would never have gone. I would not have followed through on the offer. It was a complicated situation from several points of view, but that is not what scared me.
The only thing… please, certain things that happened and I don't want us to remember them. We were coming after very good periods. Poli Iași, Sepsi… What happened really shouldn't have happened to me, but that was the situation,” Neagoe said.
The people at Dinamo didn't love me at all! Dinamo fans don't have to love me. Although I have absolutely nothing to share with them. And then it was about the gallery, not the dynamists! Dinamo is a big club. Even today I meet people who sympathize with Dinamo. We talk, take pictures… Part of the gallery, they know very well what happened.
– Eugen Neagoe, on the show “Friends of Ovidiu”
