When it comes to derbies , Romania is known for the Bucharest’s big matches , when Romania’s giants, Steaua , Rapid and Dinamo face off. But Romania has quite a few local rivalries , and the most heated ones are Politehnica Timisoara vs. UTA Arad and Universitatea Cluj vs CFR Cluj. In fact I consider this matches even better, from an ultras point of view , than Bucharest’s derbies…and I’m a Dinamo fan myself. The reason is a very simple one…THE HUGE PASSION surrounding these matches. You see, these are not simple football rivalries, they involve much more than that, things like ethnic tensions, a rivalry between two cities that goes back for centuries and a lot of bad history.
And of course the fans don’t help either…they turned rivalries into pure hate ! .

Initially I wanted to name this article “ Romania’s little derbies” , but as you already see , there’s nothing little about them.

Episode 1 . POLITEHNICA TIMISOARA vs. U.T.A Arad

Politehnica Timisoara and UTA Arad are just contemporary symbols of a rivalry that goes way back in time , between two of the largest cities of Western Romania, Timisoara and Arad. Being very close to the western borders , not only made them economical , cultural and trading centers , but also ensured that the game of football entered Romania trough this area, in the early 1900’s, via central and Western Europe. Some of the early teams to win the Romanian football championship, Chinezu and Ripensia, came from Timisoara , in the 1920’s. Also the team from Arad, UTA , is a six times champion of Romania , winning its last trophy in 1970.
So you can imagine that football culture has a very long tradition in these two cities and the teams attract huge numbers of fans . Also add to the mix the fact that the cities are only 51 kilometers apart and you get a very volatile situation.

Olsdchool photos and videos :

The start of the rivalry , was , by some accounts, a match played in Timisoara , in 1964 . The team from Timisoara, back then called Stiinta not Politehnica , needed points badly , as they were trying to avoid relegation. The match ended 3-3 , but the referee allowed a goal for UTA even though the player was in offside position and canceled one for the home team . The match ended in a hale of rocks trown by Timisoara fans. Their stadium was suspended and they had to play the remaining matches in the nearby city of Resita. At the end of the season Stiinta Timisoara was relegated.

Fan movement started taking shape in Romania in early 1970’s, around the time that U.T.A. was still a powerhouse of Romanian football, but the supporters were not ultras/hooligans type of fans , as the communist regime did not allow anything like that. Instead they were organized in , something we Romanians call, GALERIE ( a fan sector or a supporter club are the closest thing to it ). Violence was a rare occurrence in Romanian football , also not allowed by the regime who kept a tight leash on Romania’s population , but the western derby of Romania made an exception. The 1970′s were marked by heavy fightings when these two teams played against each other.

Timisoara fans in the 1970′s

The first seeds of a ultras style of support appeared in Timisoara in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and soon after in Arad also.
But the ultras style did not made things worst , in fact by the mid 1990’s it would get them closer and the fans used to visit each other and stand side by side at important matches , expecially UTA’s fans used to travelled to Timisoara , when Politehnica played a team from Bucuresti .
The trigger was , according to some sources a late 1990’s derby,played in Arad , when Politehnica managed to win 3-1, a match supposedly followed by a big fight in a part of Arad called , Aradul Nou ( New Arad) or a match from 2003 , when UTA won the match with 4 goals to 3. Before the match everything was peacefull in Timisoara and UTA’s fans could walk around without any restriction , but after the match a huge fight erupted. Lots of cars with Arad license plates were vandalized and many of UTA’s fans were beaten. All the bad blood from the past immediately resurfaced and the two sets of fans never looked back.

There wouldn’t be a true derby without some stolen banners , and in the middle 2000’s some of the most important banners from both sides have fallen in the hands of their enemies.
The first one to fall was UTA’s Red Fighters banner, before a cup match , in which the two rivals faced on neutral ground. The incident was very violent , the guy holding the banner was beaten really bad needing extensive surgery on one of his hands . As far as I know he never made a full recovery .

Not to be outdone , UTA’s supporters managed to steal the “ ULTRANATIV” banner in a daring attack right in the middle of Timisoara. At the time of the incident ULTRANATIV was the main ultras group of Timisoara’s South Terrace.

But this derby is not all about violence, it is also the scene of some of the most beautiful choreografical displays and pyroshows on Romania’s ultrascene.

Politehnica Timisoara

UTA Arad

There were not a lot of ocassions for these two sides to meet in the recent years, as UTA played most of the time in the second division and Politehnica in the top flight , but this year, with the relegation of Politehnica Timisoara in the second league for financial reasons , the two sides faced off again. As expected both sets of fans did their best to outmatch their rivals and the result was MAGNIFICENT.

12►

In a couple of days we will be back with the second part of this article deicated to the derby of Cluj- Napoca between Universitatea Cluj and CFR Cluj.
You can also read the firts two chapters of our Ultras Derbies series of articles : Derby della Lanterna , the derby of the italian city of Genoa , and the Derby of Sarajevo , the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina.