Article by Romeo Ene – Published on Tuesday, 28 April 2026, 08:56 / Updated on Tuesday, 28 April 2026 08:56
Cluj University is also thinking about the future, and the “students” announced during Monday that the young striker Eduardo Bodnar (16 years old), winner of the League and the Elite Cup in the U16 category, signed the first contract as a professional player with the formation preceded by Cristiano Bergodi (61 years old).
Bodnar started playing football at the local team Cenizia Rădăuți, later moved to the junior groups of FC Botoşani, and then arrived at “U”, two and a half years ago.
Eduardo Bodnar signed his first contract as a professional player with U Cluj
“The young forward Eduardo Bodnar (16 years old), winner of the League and Elite Cup in the U16 category with “U”, signed his first contract as a professional player with our club.
A center forward by trade, Eduardo won the U16 Elite League with our team, in the 2023-2024 season, following a final with Craiova University, decided on a penalty shoot-out, where one of the successes belonged to the young top who at that time was playing in a higher age category.
He continued to perform with the U16 team in the next season as well, when he won the Elite Cup, after a last act with Farul (4-0), in which he scored with a header.
In addition to these collective performances, our player can boast of no less than 45 goals during the previous competitive year, while in the current season he scored 16 times for the University U17 team, including a decisive hat-trick in the victory over Rapid (3-2), delivering three more decisive assists.
Bodnar did not remain indebted to the performance level even under the tricolor, where, together with the selected U17 team, he qualified in League A of the European Championship preliminaries, thanks to the victory with Azerbaijan (5-1) and the draws with France (1-1) and Israel (1-1).
With Eduardo Bodnar and his colleague, Tudor Coșa, among the protagonists, the Romanian U17 national team succeeded even more, ticking off the first qualification in history for a World Championship final tournament.
The three games mentioned above, which are joined by the victories against Iceland (5-2) and Portugal (1-0) and the defeat against Italy (1-2), constituted Romania's road to the World Cup and represent the six presences of the central attacker at the level of the U17 national team.
Also, between November 2024 and March 2025, Bodnar played in three friendly matches for the Romanian U16 national team, with Slovakia (1-1, 45 minutes), Montenegro (0-0, 18 minutes) and Ukraine (2-4, 90 minutes),” U Cluj reported via the official website.
Eduardo Bodnar signed his first contract as a professional player with U Cluj // PHOTO: Facebook @FC Universitatea Cluj
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U Cluj is currently in 2nd place in the Superliga play-off, with 39 points, 3 behind the leader Universitatea Craiova.
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Jovo Lukic (championship top scorer with 18 goals), Virgiliu Postolachi and Atanas Trică are the other forwards in U Cluj's squad.
The current situation from the Superliga play-off
