Im surprised someone actually remembered them and even noticed what happened to them outside of Romania. Maybe you could also take a look at Dinamo Bucharest, the second most successfull romanian club getting its first relegation in history and now battling to survive in the second league.

FC Viitorul didn't go bankrupt. They merged with Farul Constanta and became FCV Farul at the end of the 19/20 season. They are still run by Gheorghe Hagi

As a West Ham fan whenever I hear Astra girgui all the bad memories come back

YES! YES! Thank you for this video Alfie! Fun fact: the team in the thumbnail is called Arsenal Tunari. Tunari is a small Romanian commune whose name literally translates to "Gunners", which is why they called themselves Arsenal in a not unprecedented bit of blatant plagiarism by Romanian football teams. Who remembers Juventus București?

Alfie, do one of these videos About Belenenses in Portugal! The club is one of only TWO clubs that won the Primeira Liga outside the Big Three, and now the club is split in two, Literally, and had to start all over from the regional divisions in Portugal. Their recovery from that is also great, as they have had 5 years of consecutive promotions since their restart, as they are now in the third division!

This is the HITC 7s content we want football clubs that are obscure and in crisis

On behalf of all romanians, thank you for making this video. I can't wait to get cozy and watch this one. Cheers!

Thanks Alfie, great video! There is just one thing to correct at 25:38 : Viitorul Constanța didn't die, they changed their Logo and name to Farul Constanța, since they merged with this club from the second tier which has far more history than Viitorul. It also was the first club where Hagi played in the 80s, so it's also a nice story since Hagi has now his boyhoodclub under its ownership. anyways, great job and congratulations on the 500k!

I am from Ploiesti and actually saw Astra play while they were still based here. Their stadium still stands, but is in ruins ever since they moved to Giurgiu and even worse after they were relegated, i don t think anyone uses it for anything anymore(a few years after they moved to Giurgiu their academy was still here and they used this ground still often for training)

Right now there are 2 teams with the same name (Universitatea Craiova) in the Romanian 1st league. Both of them claim the trophies and history of the original Universitatea and they fight for their rights , not only in court ;). Something like this is only possible in Romania and I think you could do a video on this

Thank you for posting a video about a Romanian team!

as a West Ham fan, I found this amusing, weirdly West Ham fans have been keeping a small eye on how Astra have done since those years so I imagine a fair few of us knew how bad the last few years had been

I have been watching this channel since very near it's beginnings. I love Alfie's dry wit and research skills. I love hearing all these fascinating football stories and the real world situations that play out in the background. This week and especially this morning has been mental and i can't explain how or why but for the entire time i watched this video i was engaged. This gave me what i needed. A distraction that didn't turn my brain off but rather redirected it temporarily and I am very greatful for that fact. Everyone should go and subscribe to Alfie's personal channel. He is far too good for HITC. If you see this mate then thank you for all your hard work. You are a gem especially when compared to most other people involved in football content on KZfaq.

One correction: Viitorul Constanta didn't get relegated or go bust. They merged with Farul Constanta, which had been playing in Liga II, and the new club took on the identity of Farul Constanta. Viitorul was the club of Gheorghe Hagi's youth academy in Constanta, and Farul was the club where he began his career as a player, so the merger made sense from that perspective. You could probably make a "what on earth is going on" video about Romania every week. Several major Romanian clubs (U Craiova, Poli Timisoara, Poli Iasi, U Cluj, Rapid Bucharest, Petrolul Ploiesti, FC Brasov, FC Vaslui, and most recently Gaz Metan Medias) have been through this cycle of insolvency, relegation, or dissolution in the last decade or so, and there have been several flash-in-the-pan clubs like Astra recently (Unirea Urziceni, Otelul Galati, etc.).

Great, well-documented content, congratulations! However, if you want to investigate the biggest enigma of Romanian football, let me recommend this team: Unirea Urziceni. To have a team from a 15 k inhabitants town go from 3rd tier to national champions to beating the likes of Rangers and Sevilla in the Champions League to selling almost the entire team to being dissolved over the span of less than a decade is something I personally never heard of before or after.

At 25:38. Viitorul never relegated. They just merged with Farul, a team that played the previous season in the second division.

An honourable mention will be the Romanian club "Otelul Galati". They were managed in 2010/11 by the former romanian player who was included in Romania's golden team,Dorinel Munteanu. In that season,they finished first in the romanian league,and won the supercup against the club that was considered the best in romania at that time,Steaua Bucharest. They then went to the champions league 2011/12 group stages,facing Man United,Benfica and Basel. After a bad champions league campaign,finishing 4th with 0 poins,their owner at that time,Marius Stan,decided not to invest the 20 milion dollars in the club but gave it all at his friends. In the same season,after a bad 6th place positioning,Munteanu decided to leave too,and the club started to fall. After 3 years,Otelul got relegated to the second division. Not much time passed and they got disbanded,but,the fans quickly brought it back to life,in the fourth division,and promoted from the first season to third division,in 2016/17. After 5 years in the third division,they promoted to the second division. At the moment,everything works like clockwork,not being beaten once this season

Cristian Fabbiani played at Cluj and used to talk about romanian football corruption. As an argentinian, these topics feel very familiar.

You should cover the state of modern Romanian football more frequently, Alfie. Thanks for this, even though I'm not an Astra Giurgiu fan. 🇷🇴

as a romanian I'm so excited to see this video! you did a very good job except that Viitorul Constanța didn't got relegated, they merged with FCV Farul Constanta currently in Liga1 from Romania

Very very good video. And it could be a whole series, because many Romanian clubs were or are in the same situation. Another interesting topic is "the 90s cooperative" - a long series of match fixing between a group of clubs with the aim of mass avoiding relegation. kudos!

Love the fact that Football Manager is cited as a source alongside Google and Wikipedia

Literally everybody's first thought must have been. "Where on earth do Astra Giurgiu play?" Well done Alfie, i'm gonna watch this one soon as i have enjoyed very much the previous What on earth is going on... videos.

Alfie, I love that you actually do your honest best to pronounce everything correctly. You tend to do pretty well.

Alfie, keep on doing you. Always entertaining. Never a let down. Appreciate your effort, m8. Much love from NYC. Wolves, ay we!!!

Thanks for the video Alfie :D great insight...and the said romanian football at this stage is similar to the US one... where you need money to get into to play, while nobody aside from Hagi is really investing in the youth academies. the 80's, 90's generation came from all round the country not from money and that's where the desire to get better is lacking.

Suddenly my aspirations of being a professional footballer are back alive. I could literally just turn up to Astra Giurgiu and get a game.

1:35 only one of those top-6 is still in Liga 1, by the way. FCSB, of course. 3:52 the more I learn about Romanian football, the more it seems that its crisis started somewhere around early-mid 2000s. So right now is pretty stretched.

As a Steaua (FCSB) fan I hated Astra because they took a title away from us and completely trashed us in Romanian league! They use to have very good players, decent budget, and good management. They just come out of nowhere and trash all bigger teams from Bucharest and Cluj that were used to play on European coups every year. That’s why football is a beautiful sport I guess 😅 sometimes bigger teams deserve to be reminded that just because they have bigger budgets, history and fan base is not meaning that they can’t lose. I used to hate them with passion! But now I feel sorry for what happened to them! I wish I see them back in the first league. Every time they played in European coups they represent our country with proud and they give the best they could. Last time when Astra eliminated West Ham, they been already in big trouble as the owner was jailed, best players left, and the ones that stayed they didn’t been paid on time. That’s even more impressive as how they mobilized against a team with a much bigger history and budget!

Love these kinds of vids due to learn more financial problems or drama along with the existence of new clubs I have never heard of and prob never will unless topics like this are made lmao

@HITCSevens A series of videos on CFR Cluj and Rapid București Please?

I do appreciate that you have been able to untangle what has happened in the Romanian football in the past 15 years. Also, good Romanian names pronunciation 😀

im happy there is a non romaian talking about romanian football💪💪 keep up the good work

Bloke, your picture research skills are top class.

I love these videos, keep up the great work.

This is legendary! Great video Alfie

Been waiting so long for you to do a video on Romanian football. I think all Romanian teams have something interesting/ sketchy happening in the background. I would love to see a video on CFR Cluj who seem to sleepwalk themselves to Romanian league titles these days and on the fall of the Romanian national team

6:45 my hometown (Câmpina) :D Greets from RO. Thank you for such interesting yet niche topic! ❤️

In fact, Astra Ploiești had its first top-tier season way back in the 98/99 season, when they had a pretty good squad and were wearing blue & red striped shirts, not thew white & black they've had in the 2010s.

well its not only Astra here in Romania, almost every big club who has done us some great memories on european stage, has faded away, and its because of corruption and bad managing of those who owns or purchase this clubs, at my local club we struggle to stay in the second league, even tho we had a great history of playing in the first stage of Romanian league for years, lets just say that something is very wrong with the whole Romanian football who is painfully dying in our country, but cheers up for this video! Great content as always.

Great video and great Information

Great video bro

Well, the thing with the Romanian football is a bit deeper than you would think First: most Romanian football clubs are not profitable, mainly because they can not sell tickets for games and the tv money are still low(compared to the wage bill of a club). The only profitable clubs in Romania are Farul(which is making all of their money from selling young players to foreign clubs or fcsb) and fcsb(which is usually buying players from clubs of a smaller reputation in Romania and selling them to foreign clubs). All the other clubs are either selling players that they got as free agents(like botosani, which is one of the best run clubs in the country) just to cover their costs(usually a club spends around 3 million euros in expenses, and receive around 1.5 from tv and tickets, most bank been made from actually selling players) Two: most of the Romanian football is so dysfunctional due to owners trying to get in the champions league group stages(where a club receives at least 20 mils euro for been part of that) operating at high wage bills, running debt up and eventually going bust(I am looking at you cfr cluj) Third: a lot of clubs go bust due to their owner’s corruption or perceived corruption. For the first case of corruption you have the transfer scandal from the late 2000’s, where a lot of owners went to prison for owning a percentage of their players contracts(similar to what the owners of Dinamo Zagreb are still doing). For the second case of corruption, is pretty much people in power, from the central government, feeling threatened by these owners getting a lot of potential political influence(the owner of badly, porumboiu is one of the cases) So yeah things are kinda fucked, maybe in the future more clubs will realize that the only sustainable way of making money from football is through developing academies and selling youngsters for profit( the hagi way), heck, even the owner of fcsb, becali, realized that

Check what happened to Unirea Urziceni just a few years back (also won the league and did a great season in the UCL group stages the following season)! Seems to be some sort of pattern… Also Dinamo Bucharest, the second most successful team in the country (former UCC semifinalist and Cup Winner’s Cup finalist in the 90’s, now relegated for the 1st time)

Video Suggestion: The ongoing world cup fiasco with Ecuador and their allegedly ineligible player.

What a marvelous video! I had only asked for it for 2 or 3 days about Astra Giurgiu thats crazy!

As a romanian I say you made an amazing video about the situation on romanian football. Sadly ,because in communism sport was controlled by the state , now in democracy, people still dont know how to manage sport as private entity. That is why many football teams are still dependent by state money like city halls or local government.

As soon as the change of managers was mentioned, I knew Watford would get a shout out. Should do a video on how the club I love seems to be run in such a crazy way :(

>Astra also lacks the resources to pay the referee This part sounds absolutely hilarious when taken out of context

Viitorul Constanta actually have a very different situation, where the owner, Gheorghe Hagi, acquired the rights to use the name "Farul Constanta", which was in use by a 2nd division club in the same city, and so the clubs simply changed names

15:57, the RARELY got prosecuted and now almost never. We are not that better😂 Plus after just two weeks from releasing the video, Astra retired from the third league and as a result the team disbanded. Also Pandurii Tg. Jiu also disbanded in the last few days. Another two teams with tradition in the RO league disbanded and the situation is very dire.

Great video. You coverd all the history better than a romanien journalist. Good job.

This is the kind of title I’m subscribed to this channel for

They had quite an interesting team at times, I do miss them in our league as they were one of the few that practiced elegant football with the help of Alibec,1st from the left top row at 0:45 , still one of our national team strikers, Budescu, who's always a little lazy magician, Lovin, Silviu Lung, Takayuki Seto, Teixeira, Sapunaru and others.Nice vid.

Hi Alfie, like your content very much!! Could you please do a vid on the downfall of the Slovakia National team, my homeland. Whilst they managed to qualify to the Euros 2016 and 2020 recently and narrowly escaped the 2018 WC, they now play in the Nations League C where they finished third in a Group with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Belarus, winning just 2 out of 6 possible matches against those underdogs and losing three times. As a result of this lackluster, they're now seeded in pot 5 of the EURO 2024 qualifiers, alongside Gibraltar, Malta and even below Faroe Islands

You should do one of these videos about Brown de Arrecifes from Argentina. They made their national debut on the first season of the Argentino B (created as the 4th tier for teams outside AFA) in 95/96, winning promotion. Next season they also won promotion, from the Argentino A (3rd tier) to the Nacional B, the 2nd tier and lowest national division. They spent six seasons there, getting into the playoffs for promotion to the First Division in two ocasions, one of which had Gerardo Martino a their manager on his debut on the role. Then they got relegated again to the Argentino A, were they lost all 20 games and got relegated to the Argentino B, where they tied 2 and lost 18 games to be relegated again in two consecutives seasons, where they tied 2 games and lost 38 out of 40. The now extinct Argentino C (5th tier) had its teams formally invited by the asociation, and Brown de Arrecifes was so bad that they didn't even got invited. They never recovered, playing on their county league since 2005, with two unsuccessful campaings in the Argentino C in 2009 and 2014. Another one would be Tiro Federal de Rosario. While their fall wasn't so quick, it was from the top tier in 2006 (their only season in the First Division), to their current situation in the 6th tier in 2019, playing on the Second Division of their county league. They got relegated five times in just 13 years.

HITC Sevens video about a team or subject I’ve never heard of or never thought about pops up… well I’d better learn everything about this now

Add Shell to the list of companies (together with the likes of Bayern or IBM) you should not ask what they were doing in Germany during WW2

It is a habit in our romanian football that big clubs that were league/cup champions to end up being very badly after few years. There are many causes that led to this disaster mainly political influences and corruption. Sadly there are more examples of clubs who were in the same situation.. Unirea Urziceni, Otelul Galati, FC Vaslui and the most recent Dinamo Bucuresti

A tad obscure but well researched and put together as usual...

There’s nothing out there that I can find, so I’d love for you to do a video on Apoula Edel. A quick read of his Wikipedia is quite a rollercoaster of a career so I think it’d be fascinating if you could dig even deeper and learn more about him, cause I imagine there’s a lot more

Viitorul didn't relegate, it changed its name to Farul, which was in the second league at the time. Interesting fact, Viitorul won the championship while Farul was in the third league, but now Farul considers that championship as their championship. Even though they were in the 3rd tier

You're too good at this!

This season of the newly-branded "Superleague" we have an increased attendance compared to what we had last season

As a West Ham fan, I am enjoying every. single. moment of this.

As of October 30, Astra officially no longer exist.

i'm actually so grateful that you remembered our country, man

Viitorul Constanta was fusioned with Farul Constanta, since that club was owned and coached by Romanian football legend Gheorghe Hagi.

Just wanna say your pronunciation of Romanian words is totally on-point!

Romanian here. Thanks for the video

What is up with all the no license relegations in that league. Do they have to gain one each year? Or is it insolvency issues? @20:10 Relegation round, now I am confused. Imagine that in EPL you can qualify for Europe or the Relegation round. That is it. No automatic relegation just the relegation round.

To clear up any confusion, did Astra Giurgiu beat West Ham in successive seasons?

Did not expect to learn about the history of Shell today

don't let these pictures fool you, Romania is a beautiful country with beautiful people, great night life and culture.

First thing that went through my mind was this interview from West Ham Fan TV 🤣

Thanks for Making something about Romanian football 🇷🇴

This is so weird I had just seen them lose 12-0 tonight 60 conceded in 6 games was literally going to put on your recent video a potential vid on it but you read my mind lol

What On Earth Is Going On At Dinamo Bucharest please

Forever giving West Ham Fans PTSD. We're still bitter even while they're on their deathbed...

Dom is a legend, gotta love him nice one Alfie

Thanks for representing my country!!

OMG a romanian team mentioned in a video!!!🇷🇴

As a Romanian, i have to admit that you made a very accurate video. What happend to Astra G happend to several other clubs, like Vaslui, Univ. Craiova, FC Arges, Poli Timisoara and so on... After the president of the club goes to jail the team vanish an it might, or might not come back if they have the fans or the money. Now the biggest teams are in the second divison like Steaua and Dinamo and the others are just patetic. I can' t watch romanian games, i prefer premier league or primera divison beacuse it is more entertaining.

My only knowledge of them is from when my team (Inverness Caledonian Thistle) lost to them in a Europa League play off a few years ago. I think they knocked West Ham out in the next round after us too

Day 1: You should make a video about Kardemir Karabükspor 🇹🇷 (they've won 5 games in the past 6 seasons)

Hi Alfie. Was wondering if you've read Gary Neville's new book yet on ways to fix English football? I remember you made a video after the super league with ways to fix football so I'm guessing his book would be right up your street

you should make a video about the Rapid Bucharest comeback.cheers

Do A Video On What On Earth Is Going On At Ruban Kazan They Got Relegated From The Russian Premier League Last Season

Me, a West Ham fan: *pain*

Unlike Astra Giurgius founding date, I know when I started commenting this suggestion (I mean I write the day every time I comment). So I suggest again: Day 14: The biggest wins in every european top flight (Athletic Bilbio 12-1 FC Barcelona; Gladbach 12-0 Dortmund; Ajax 13-0 VVV Venlo).

I imagine Giurgiu fans refer their their decline as "the curse of Dom".

You should really do a video on Dinamo Bucharest as well. In my opinion, what went on at Astra is child's play to the complete CHAOS that is still taking place at Dinamo.

Well. As Polish and Widzew Łódź fan, I know what if club has a huge debt. Our club annouced bancruptcy in 2015 to come back to Ekstraklasa in 2022. We are currenty in 2nd place in table. If we would finished as 2nd, we will play in Conference League qualifications

Man, Alfie certainly read my mind on this one: took the words right out me mouth, he did lol....Been keeping me up at night and no mistake :)

Can you also make a video with all the former champion teams of Romania that no longer exist or are in lower tiers? Name it something like: "Europe's cemetery - Fallen Champions" :)

Astra Giurgiu is one of my favourite Romanian footballing clubs,just like most of the respective Romanian men's footballing clubs from the top till bottom tiers respectively daily and ever in this world and other planets,good friends!!!From an extraordinary success to a massive failure,I feel extremely so sad to see their downfall but fully hope to see them bouncing back with their massive hardwork with their full effort and smart transfer businesses to slowly step up from being in the Romanian third tier to the top tier of the country's league,good friends!!!LONG LIVE,ASTRA GIURGIU!!!🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️

Could you make a painstaking video of worst debuts for each PL club

As a West Ham fan, a lot of our fans been following their demise closely, and we were celebrating it, especially after we got back into Europe as we knew that we can’t get them in Europe again.

Never mind Astra Gurgle, what about a 20 team league that you can finish 7th in, and get relegated 👀

Please do a video on FC Zurich. They were champion last season but are currently languishing at the bottom of the Swiss league