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Tag: Helmut Duckadam

  • Romanian Footballer Helmut Duckadam

    Romanian Footballer Helmut Duckadam

    The former Romanian goalkeeper, Helmut Duckadam, known as the «Hero of Seville», left us in December, last year, at the age of only 65. This famous footballer had faced several health issues in recent years and, according to newspapers in Bucharest, in the autumn of 2024 he was subjected to an open-heart surgery.

    On May 7, 1986, Romanian eleven, Steaua Bucharest, obtained the most important performance in the history of the Romanian football, the European Champions’ Cup. Steaua made history that year in Seville by defeating the Spanish champions, FC Barcelona, in the penalty shootout.

    Marius Lăcătuş and Gabi Balint scored for Steaua, but the real hero of the Romanian side that night was its goalie, Helmut Duckadam, who managed to save all the four shots of the opponents and brought home the trophy.

    Helmut Duckadam was born on April 1, 1959, in Arad county, western Romania, in a locality first documented in 1256. He made his debut in football with the local side, Semlacana, then he joined the School Football Club Gloria Arad. He made his debut in senior competitions in 1977, as the goalie of third-leaguer Constructorul Arad. In the first Romanian football league he played in September 1978, in a game against CS Târgovişte, his side, UTA, lost 2-0.

    He was part of the UTA lineup for four years after which he signed up with Steaua Bucharest, the best Romanian football side at that time.

    With Steaua he won the national championship twice, in 1985 and 1986. After the famous victory in the European Champions Cup, he had to give up his sports career after a surgery in his right arm caused by an aneurysm. He came back to the pitch in 1989, with the second leaguer Vagonul Arad, where he stayed for two seasons. After the end of his sporting career, he joined the Border Police where he worked for a while before his departure to the United States, where he spent one year. Upon his return to Romania he joined the sports world again by serving as honorary president of the former football club, Steaua Bucharest, today known as FCSB.

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  • The Sports Year 2024

    The Sports Year 2024

    Romania made it back to the world’s top rankings in 2024. At the Olympics in Paris, the Romanian delegation came 23rd in the world’s medal ranking, a headway since the previous edition in Tokyo, where they ranked only 46th.

    The Olympic Games kicked off in Paris in late July with a grandiose but controversial ceremony of issues less related to sports though…The first medals for Romania were brought by swimmer David Popovici: gold in the 200 meters free-style race and bronze in the 100-meter event.

    Then Andrei Cornea and Marian Enache stepped onto the podium’s highest step in the double scull race and so did Simona Radiş and Ancuţa Bodnar in the similar women’s event. Ioana Vrînceanu and Roxana Anghel became silver medalists in the women’s pair event and so did Gianina van Groningen and Ionela Cozmiuc in the women’s lightweight double scull. The third Olympic title was obtained by the Romanian eight in the last day of the rowing competitions.

    Weightlifter Mihaela Cambei reaped silver in the 49 kilogram category, while gymnast Ana Maria Barbosu obtained bronze in the floor event, upon a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport based in Lausanne.

    Football again grabbed the limelight after the end of the Olympics, and Romania boasted a representative in the Champions League’s qualifiers, FCSB, one in the Europa League’s qualifiers, Corvinul Hunedoara, and another two in the Conference League: CFR Cluj and Universitatea Craiova. FCSB made it to the third round of the Champions league, where they were stopped in their tracks by the Czech side Sparta Prague. The Romanian champions later played in the playoffs for Europa League, where they outperformed LASK Linz of Austria. After six matches, FCSB ranked 10th in Europa League with three wins, two draws and a defeat.

    In January they will be playing Qarabag of Azerbaijan, and Manchester United in a home match. Corvinul Hunedoara were knocked out in the second preliminary round by Rijeka of Croatia. They next joined the Conference League’s third round where they got outperformed by Astana of Kazakhstan. In the same competition Universitatea Craiova were knocked out of the qualifiers by the Slovenian side Maribor. CFR Cluj managed to obtain the best performance and made it to the play-offs, where they lost to Cypriote side Pafos.

    In the second half of the year, Romania’s national football side played in the Nations League under the guidance of the famous Romanian headcoach and football legend, Mircea Lucescu, who had come back to the Romanian national side after almost 40 years. Romania won all the six matches in the second group of League C, which also included Cyprus, Lithuania and Kosovo. Our footballers won five matches and the match in Bucharest against Kosovo was decided by the UEFA after the visitors had left the pitch before the final whistle and the result was three-nil to Romania. So Romania ended up among the best four winners in the Nations League groups and secured their place in the World Cup playoffs. Lots drawn in December have placed Romania in Group H together with Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus and San Marino. Our footballers will be playing Bosnia and Herzegovina in March. The group’s winners are directly qualified whereas the 12 sides in the second positions in the groups plus the best sides in the 2024-2025 edition of the Nations League, which didn’t qualify in the preliminaries, will be vying for the four places available in the European zone.

    We cannot end without mentioning the best Romanian athletes who left us in 2024. Canoe sprinter Vasile Dîba left us in February. Dîba stepped on the highest step of the podium at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. The former great handballer Stefan Birtalan, double world champion and Olympic medalist, left us in May.

    Javelin thrower, Mihaela Peneş, gold medalist at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and silver medalist in Mexico City in 1968, left us in August. On December 2 we lost one of Romania’s greatest goalkeepers, Helmut Duckadam. He was dubbed the Hero in Seville, after he had saved four penalty shots in the 1986 finals of the European Champions Cup Steaua Bucharest won against Barcelona.

    Dan Grecu, the first world champion in Romania’s men gymnastics, bronze medalist at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 also left us in December.

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  • December 3, 2024

    December 3, 2024

    VOTE The final result of the Parliamentary election in Romania, whose centralisation ended on Monday night, says that seven parties have made it to Parliament. First to the Chamber of Deputies are the ruling PSD and the sovereignist AUR followed by the co-ruling PNL and the centre-rightist USR. In the fifth and sixth places are the sovereignist-extremist SOS Romania and another sovereignist group known as the Party of Young People. These two political groups, for the first time, had their representatives in the Legislature. Last in terms of the number of votes was the UDMR. The ranking was also maintained in the race for the Senate. The country’s incumbent Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu, has announced a first round of talks with the interim PNL president Ilie Bolojan in an attempt to forge a majority coalition. Ciolacu, a Social-Democrat, says that a majority Parliament coalition could be forged with the Liberals, UDMR and the Group of national minorities. In turn, the USR president Elena Lasconi endorses a pro-European national unity government while UDMR leader Kelemen Hunor stands for a Parliament-backed government made up of the PSD, PNL, USR and UDMR. In the meantime the Romanians are bracing for the second round of the presidential election, due on Sunday, 8 December.

     

    VISIT Over December 3 and 4, Romania’s Foreign Minister, Luminita Odobescu, is attending the meeting of the NATO Foreign Ministers in Brussels. The meeting has three sessions, which will be tackling the latest developments in the southern vicinity of NATO, the involvement of the North Korean army, the NATO-Ukraine relationship with emphasis on domestic reforms and NATO-EU cooperation. The last session will be devoted to NATO’s strategic agenda, the allies’ priorities for the upcoming summit in the Hague particularly by strengthening the Eastern Flank as part of the allied response to Russia’s threats. A session devoted to Ukraine will involve the participation of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas.

     

    GAME Romania’s national women’s handball side will tonight be playing Serbia in the last match of Group B of the European Championships underway in Austria, Hungary and Switzerland. Romania is hankering for a good result to advance towards the European competitions after a narrow victory against Czechia and a defeat against Montenegro.

     

    DEATH Romania’s legendary goal-keeper, Helmut Duckadam, passed away at the age of 65. He had earlier been admitted to a hospital in Bucharest and had several surgical operations in recent years including a heart procedure in September. He was dubbed ‘the Hero of Seville’, as he had a decisive hand in the victory his side Steaua Bucharest clinched in the 1986 finals of the European Champions Cup. His performance of saving all the four shots in the game’s shootout session, has also been added to the Book of Records.

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  • The ‘Hero of Seville’ dies

    The ‘Hero of Seville’ dies

    The legendary football goalkeeper Helmut Duckadam, winner of the European Champions Cup in 1986 with Steaua Bucharest, died at the age of 65, the Romanian sports press announces. He has faced several health problems in recent years and in September 2024 he underwent open heart surgery. Born on April 1, 1959, in Semlac, Arad, in a family of Swabians (ethnic Germans from western Romania), Duckadam made his debut in 1978 in Division A, with the county’s flagship team, UTA. After four seasons, he was transferred to Steaua Bucharest, a departmental club, patronized by the Defense Ministry, according to a Soviet model followed at the time by all the countries behind the former Iron Curtain.

     

    Duckadam was nicknamed the “Hero of Seville” after, on May 7, 1986, in the final of the European Champions Cup with FC Barcelona, ​​he saved all four of Barcelona’s penalty kicks as Steaua won the shootout 2-0, after the final finished 0-0 after extra time. In the shootout, Marius Lăcătuș and Gavrilă Balint scored for the Romanian champions. With a team made up exclusively of Romanian footballers, Steaua Bucharest was the first team from a communist country to win the most important continental interclub football trophy. Other footballers in that team that achieved that unique performance in the history of Romanian football and who have passed away in the meantime are the midfielder Lucian Bălan and the defender Ilie Bărbulescu. Duckadam’s performance was registered in the Book of Records. But, barely reaching the heights of glory, health problems forced him to give up professional football for good at only 27 years old. Three years after the final in Seville, in 1989, Duckadam returned to the field, for the last two seasons, at division B Vagonul Arad. All in all, he has 133 participations in Division A, 13 in the Romanian Cup and 9 in the European Champions Cup. His record includes two national champion titles, one continental champion and a Romanian Cup title.

     

    There is life after football, and Duckadam joined the Border Police in his hometown of Semlac. He was a major in the Police, from where he retired due to illness. In 2003, the former goalkeeper won the Visa Lottery, receiving the right to legally emigrate to the United States, but he shortly returned home. For a decade, Duckadam held the position of image president at the FCSB club in Bucharest. He was declared an honorary citizen of Bucharest, and the Presidency of Romania awarded him the “Sports Merit” Order. In recent years, Helmut Duckadam had become a sports analyst at a specialized channel in Bucharest. In the shows, he was always warm, chatty, with a good dose of humor, he preferred praise to criticism, never got angry and was incapable of offending anyone. At the news of the death of this gentle giant, his colleagues said, together with the entire Romanian football world: Thank you, Helmut! (LS)