Steaua Bucharest Owner Puts a Bounty on His Rivals

By: Daryl | March 3rd, 2008

Gigi Becali, Steau We already know that Romanian football is a bit mental. It’s the league where goalkeepers are traded for gas pipelines, squad rotation means an entire new team and managers get their win bonus early. And now it’s the league where club owners put out bounties on other clubs.

Steaua Bucharest owner Gigi Becali (pictured) is offering cash money to any team that takes points off league leaders CFR Cluj. They play Gloria Bazau this Friday. “I’ll give Gloria Buzau’ players 5,000 euros ($7,600) each for a draw against CFR Cluj and 10,000 euros for a win,” he’s said. “I will throw my money around, imploring the opponents of CFR Cluj to win for lots of zeros in return.”

“It’s about honour and dignity, not about money,” he also added, a little incongruously.

Because it absolutely is about money. Whoever wins the Romanian title this year will qualify automatically for next season’s Champions League proper. No qualifiers, no messing around, just straight into the cash-grab group stage bonanza.

The Federation of Romanian Football isn’t keen on the idea of teams being offered money by other teams to beat other teams, and has understandably threatened to punish Steau Bucharest should Becali go ahead with his plan. The big irony here is that Steau are now (at time of writing) down in third place, three points behind second place Rapid Bucharest and a full eight points behind CFR Cluj.

Winning the title isn’t even realistic unless Becali’s team put a good run of games together, no matter how many points CFR Cluj drop. So you could argue that Becali’s money would be better spent improving the Steau squad, rather than offering dodgy bonuses to other clubs that are only going to get Becali and Steau into trouble.