Article by Remus Dinu – Published on Wednesday, 22 April 2026, 02:41 / Updated on Wednesday, 22 April 2026 02:53
It would be even more fun to watch Gică Hagi's installation conference head-to-head, if you didn't know what the client's material actually is.
“The King's” country project sounds exciting in theory and chains solutions to many of the pressing issues that plague us. The selection area is almost full, our juniors are still full of talent, and the championship, where multimillionaires are imperatively called to run their capital, is an inexhaustible nursery of variants for the batch.
We are still equipped and we have the weapons to take on the giants of Europe, assures us the newly appointed coach of the FRF. Everything goes like clockwork, then.
Overconfident?
Gică Hagi's optimism is infectious and tempts you to forget, at least for a few tens of minutes, the traumas that the hilarious episodes leave you with, the absurd statements seen and heard week after week on TV, the arbitration scandals or the European failures that have become a habit here.
A symbol of our parents' youth, Hagi is a magnet of popularity, he has earned his right to be an opinion maker and absolutely no one can stop him from expressing his beliefs. A character of immeasurable complexity, destined to remain a landmark regardless of the outcome of the current mandate.
Four long and challenging years await him, in which he can prove that his arguments have won and that the surly voices that challenge his philosophy have been sorely mistaken. It would be so!
When he left the national team, in 2001, a “younger and more restless” Hagi, as he described himself in Monday's presentation, ventured to point the finger at the “misfortunes” in the domestic championship, at a time when Division A was drowning in arrangements, behind-the-scenes games and Cooperatives.
The conference held by Hagi two days after Romania – Slovenia / Photo source: Gazeta Sporturilor archive
Mircea Sandu's Federation accuses more or less veiledly that he does not intervene with a scalpel over a rotten championshipshepherded by “sharks” that prey on captive clubs. We had just lost the “play-off” with Slovenia, and the streak of successive qualifications was coming to an end.
The World Cup has remained an illusion since then, Romanian football ticking off failure after failure, regardless of the generation, the selector, the name of the administration that ruled at the Football House.
A quarter of a century later, a much more temperate and less choleric Gheorghe Hagi is committed to bringing Romanian football out of obscurityconvinced that he has all the assets to reform the national foundation and that the evil from that time has been completely eradicated. Is he right?
Gică Hagi is the new selector of the national team, photo: Ionuț Iordache (GSP.ro)
The “misfortunes” of yesterday and today
The “misfortunes” invoked by Hagi in 2001 no longer exist in the form since then, but they changed into habits just as harmful for a football that still today inhales unallowed much unbreathable air. Toxic.
Even Mircea Lucescu had given up on really hoping that he could feed his national team from the net spread over League 1. In the second part of his mandate, the former selector pointed his finger at the often questionable level of the Super League and implicitly at the narrow selection area that the internal competition offers him.
No one was surprised that only two Superliga players, Bancu and Bîrligea, got the first “11” in Istanbul.
So, the question remains: will the new coach be able to boost a championship that lacks vigor? And if so, how?
Hagi has been witnessing a lousy show since the first day of his mandate
He didn't even settle well in the new office, that the “King” is already witnessing scenes incompatible with what a championship governed by a healthy environment should entail.
FCSB, self-proclaimed benchmark club for competitors, with a third of the squad potentially selectable, flogs any vestige of normality with an elucidating dance where the patron thanks God that his own player has “broken” and the coach plays “the coach” until he gets bored and takes his boot to the airport.
Even at Hagi's former club, the conferences are, more recently, about “you would eat the rival's beregata”, while the candidates for places in the dam and Europe are indulging in insolvencies and rejected licensing files.
Needless to mention the half-empty stadiums in League 1, the muddy pitches, the obscene simulations and scandalous refereeing that “delight” us weekend after weekend.
Here, the “rich people from Romania” are invited, whom Hagi would like to see lining up at the gates of first league clubs. Competing, eventually, with the teams subscribed to the core of the state budget.
Good luck, Mr. Hagi! You will need it!
