Gheorghe Popescu (football player, 1919)

Gheorghe Popescu
Personnel
birthday	August 8, 1919
place of birth	Bucharest ,  Romania
date of death	January 25, 2001
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
1928-1933	Gloria Bucharest
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1933-1935	Gloria Bucharest
1935-1943	Sportul Studențesc	84 (48)
1944	Carmen Bucharest
1945-1946	Sparta Bucharest	12 (10)
1946-1947	Carmen Bucharest	17 0(4)
1947-1949	ASA / CSCA Bucharest	35 (16)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1937-1943	Romania	6 0(1)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1951-1953	CCA Bucharest
1952-1953	Romania
1955-1958	Romania
1958-1960	CCA Bucharest
1961	Romania
1962	Steaua Bucharest
1962	Romania
1 Only league games are given.

Gheorghe Popescu (born August 8, 1919 in Bucharest , † January 25, 2001 ) was a Romanian football player , coach and official . He played 135 games in the highest Romanian football league, Divizia A , and was responsible for the Romanian selection during the 1952 Olympic Games . From 1963 to 1967 he was President of the Romanian Football Association .

Career as a player

Popescu's career began in Gloria Bucharest's youth , where he played in the first team at the age of fourteen. At the age of 16 he joined the left wing to Bucharest football club Sportul Studenţesc in the Divizia B . In 1937 he rose with his team in the top division, the Divizia A , on. He was a regular player from a young age and a pillar of the team as a goal scorer. In the 1937/38 season he reached with his club as well as the year after relegation and also moved into the cup final in 1939 , but where he drew with his team against Rapid Bucharest with 0-2.

In the 1939/40 season Popescu achieved the best result of his time at Sportul. With 14 goals, he finished fourth on the scorer list and landed behind local rivals Venus Bucharest and Rapid Bucharest in third place in the league. In the following season he was able to almost repeat his personal haul with 13 goals, for the team it was only enough to place in midfield.

Due to the outbreak of the Second World War , the game operations in Divizia A were stopped in 1941 and only the Romanian Cup continued. Sportul moved into the cup final in 1943 , but lost to CFR Turnu Severin with 0: 4. Then Popescu had to interrupt his football career because he was drafted into the Romanian army .

After his return from the front, Popescu played for Carmen Bucharest for a short time in 1944 before returning to Sportul, which at that time was called Sparta Bucharest . There he missed qualifying for Divizia A despite ten goals in twelve games in 1946 and rejoined Carmen. With his new club he was able to win the runner-up behind ITA Arad in the 1946/47 season and thus the best placement of his career, but only scored four goals. In the summer of 1947 Carmen was dissolved by the Romanian political leadership and replaced by the newly founded army sports club ASA Bucharest , to which Popescu also moved. After relegation had just been achieved in the first year , Popescu hardly got a chance in the 1948/49 season and ended his active career.

National team

Popescu played six games for the Romanian national football team . He made his debut on June 10, 1937 in a friendly against Belgium . He then had to wait until March 31, 1940 before the new national coach Virgil Economu built on him. Popescu was used in four of five international matches this year and was able to score his only goal in the national shirt in the game against Yugoslavia on September 22, 1940. On June 13, 1943, he played his last international match against Slovakia .

Career as a coach

After the end of his active career, Popescu was in March 1951 with the beginning of the 1951 season as the successor to Francisc Ronnay coach of his former club CCA Bucharest (later Steaua Bucharest ). In the first year he won the championship and cup double . He was able to repeat this success a year later, before he was replaced by Ronnay in August 1953.

As early as May 1952, Popescu had taken over as national coach in addition to his work for CCA . In this capacity he supervised the Romanian selection during the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952 , but was defeated there in the first game by the later Olympic champion Hungary . After the missed qualification for the 1954 World Cup , he was replaced by Ștefan Dobay in the fall of 1953 .

At the beginning of 1955 Popescu was again national coach. In his second term in office, he missed qualifying for the 1958 World Cup in second place behind Yugoslavia . In autumn 1958 he was replaced by Augustin Botescu . He had previously taken over again in August 1958 as head coach at CCA Bucharest. In contrast to his first term in office, he won only one title with the championship in 1960 . Then replaced him from July 1960 Ștefan Onisie .

At the beginning of 1961 Popescu became national coach for the third time and won the two international matches that year. Then he returned from March to July 1962 again as the club coach of Steaua Bucharest (formerly CCA Bucharest ) back, but could not win the championship in the second half of 1961/62 , but the Romanian Cup . After two more games as national coach in the fall of 1962, he ended his career.

Football official

Popescu was from January 1963 to May 1967 President of the Romanian Football Association and the Uniunea pentru Cultură Fizică și Sport . During his tenure, the first football centers for children and young people were founded in Romania and the football magazine Fotbal was published . After the 1: 7 international defeat against Switzerland in the context of the European Championship qualification in 1968 , Popescu resigned from his office and returned to Steaua Bucharest as Vice President until 1973 . The Romanian championship title was won there in 1968 and the Cupa României three times from 1969 to 1971 . He was also part of the UEFA commission responsible for organizing the European Football Championship. In 1973 Popescu officially withdrew from football and later only worked sporadically as a technical advisor, including from 1983 to 1984 at Steaua Bucharest.

successes

As a player

• Romanian runner-up: 1947
• Romanian Cup finalist: 1939, 1943
• Promotion to Divizia A: 1937

As a trainer

• Olympic Games participants: 1952
• Romanian champion: 1951, 1952, 1960
• Romanian cup winners: 1951, 1952, 1962

literature

• Mihai Ionescu / Răzvan Toma / Mircea Tudoran: Fotbal de la A la Z . Mondocart Pres, Bucharest 2001, ISBN 973-8332-00-1 , p. 299 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gheorghe Popescu at steauafc.com , accessed on February 5, 2011 (Romanian)

Web links

• Gheorghe Popescu on romaniansoccer.ro (English)
• Gheorghe Popescu on labtof.ro (Romanian)