EDITORIAL : THE NINE O'CLOCK, ROMANIA

Otelul wins title, however…

Despite being in profound crisis for several years, the Romanian world of football still manages to produce surprises. A team from outside Bucharest has won the League I title for the fourth consecutive year. This time it was a team from Galati, where head coach Dorinel Munteanu, an outstanding representative of the golden generation of Romanian football who totaled 134 national team caps, managed to pull veritable miracles. The performance comes just one year after Dan Petrescu, another representative of the golden generation, amazingly managed to bring the title to Urziceni, a small town that never dreamed of appearing on the map of European football.

Starting the season as the underdog, coaching players nobody had heard of, poorly paid, Dorinel Munteanu, FC Koln’s former player, gave a lesson to top dogs Steaua and Dinamo. It was not only a lesson in football but one in character too. Preoccupied more with TV appearances, rows and ad-hominem attacks and less with football or grammar, the owners of the two aforementioned clubs, former glories of Romanian football, did nothing but extend the bleak period Steaua and Dinamo are going through for too long nevertheless.

Apart from their own biases and anger caused by their favorite teams’ failures, the Romanian football fans have no reason to minimize Otelul’s victory, because it is a victory against far too easily accepted myths. It’s an extremely rare victory with slim chances of being repeated. And that is what makes it so beautiful. For that, Dorinel Munteanu and his players deserve congratulations and should be allowed to enjoy the result with their fans. They have all the reasons in the world to do so.

On the other hand however, reservations in what concerns the team’s capacity to represents Romania in the Champions League, where it could meet teams such as FC Barcelona or Real Madrid, have already started to appear. Maybe a little bit too soon. The difference between Otelul’s players and the elite European players has even prompted the club’s president to doubt his team’s chances: “I’m not belittling my players’ work or their value. But the difference between us is far too great, it amounts to decades! We have to be realistic, to stop creating false hopes, to stop selling illusions! This is not an outburst of modesty or hypocrisy. I’m proud of my players, of us, for winning the title but I’m embarrassed to play in the Champions League. If you have common sense you will ask yourself what we are doing playing in the group stages, on Camp Nou, on Bernabeu… Oh, God!” he recently stated for the press.

Dorinel has already asked for 4-5 valuable players but Otelul President Marius Stan claims that Otelul will stick to its strategy of buying cheap and unknown players. And that is because the club’s budget does not surpass EUR 5 M, a significant part of that sum being already spent on the stadium’s floodlight system that was inaugurated several legs before the end of the season.

Indeed, although they can take pride in obtaining a historic win against Juventus Torino (Otelul won at home in the 1988 edition of the UEFA Cup, score 1-0, but went on to lose the return leg in Italy, score 0-5), Otelul Galati cannot pretend to be big champion.

Established in 1964, Otelul Galati entered the top football league 22 years later in 1986. In 1987 it finished on 4th place, qualifying for the UEFA Cup, but the team relegated at the end of the 1988/1989. Returning in the top league in 1991, it managed to qualify for the UEFA Cup in 1997/1998, 1998/1999, 2004/2005 and 2007/2008.

Until now Otelul’s best result in the championship was the 4th place it finished on in 1988, 1997 and 1998. Likewise, Otelul reached the Romanian Cup final in 2004, losing at the hands of Dinamo, score 0-2.

In this context, the team will not be able to perform honorably in the Champions League in the absence of significant investments in players and infrastructure, investments that should be expected from an important group like Arcellor Mittal. The investments would be praiseworthy since this is the last season in which Romania has the right to send a team directly in the Champions League’s group stages. We can only wish them good luck!

EC asks nine Member States,including Romania,to improve safety of railways

The European Commission (EC) has sent a reasoned opinion to nine Member States formally requesting them to fully implement the railway safety directive. Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom have so far failed to bring their national legislation into line with this directive although obliged to do so by 24 December 2010. The Commission has set a two-month deadline to remedy the situation, a press release informs. Should these Member States fail to do so, the Commission may refer the cases to the Court of Justice.

Directive 2008/110/EC improves the level of safety of the European rail transport system. It provides a legal basis for a common framework for the maintenance of rolling stock: before a rail vehicle is allowed to be put into service, the body responsible for its maintenance (known as the “entity in charge of maintenance” or ECM) must be identified. For freight wagons, the ECM must be certified according to a system developed by the European Railway Agency and adopted by the Commission on 10 May 2011.

An essential provision of the directive is that the certificate granted to an ECM is valid throughout the European Union. This provision recognises equivalence between the ECMs and intends to increase both the level of safety and the interoperability of railways throughout the EU.

Directive 2008/110/EC has not yet been transposed, or has been transposed only partially, by nine Member States: Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden and United Kingdom.
Failure to implement the directive impacts on the level of safety, posing a potential risk to users of railways. This affects not only those countries that have not implemented Directive 2008/110/EC but the whole European single railway area as well.