Romaniaspam
(Elegant as ever.)
Romania-Albania 1-1
Belarus-Romania 0-0
All right, so we got two points instead of six. D’you remember how we opened our last campaign? We were defeated 3-0 by Lithuania. We’ve come a long way, frumosele.
The training session had a lot of good news.
Balds! MURESAN! D’you remember how great he was against France two years ago? (Not quite as helpful this time, but never mind.)
Torje and Deac slashing themselves! (Try to ignore Tatarusanu’s disgust.)
Most exciting of all (for the photogs, anyway): CONTRA! (Who is out of contract at Poli, but still got a call-up. That is power.)
He stayed in a good temper for at least five minutes.
Then he started complaining to Lupescu,
followed by Tamas.
Tamas: “Heh, heh. If I put a bib on this dummy, he’ll mistake it for a person and drone monotonously at it instead of me.”
Contra: *Drones monotonously*
Then he went and stomped all over Pep Guardiola Maftei,
followed by Torje. (Deac won’t like that.)
And tried to throw bibs at Nesu.
Oops. (Is this an omen?)
But ignore all that. HE GOT TOGETHER WITH MARICA AGAIN! (They are somewhere in that tiny, pitch-black photo, I promise.)
My seekrit!OTP, back togethar! *Flutters*
STOP! RLUC TIME. (I love the bit of Florescu’s hair that’s sticking up.)
His chats are as riveting as ever. (Note Radoi yawning his head off, and Lazar breaking a cerebral hemisphere in his attempt to understand his instructions.)
Maftei was worried.
Daniel Niculae was not worried. He is continuing on his journey to normal balanced persondom, however much Contra may loom over him.
Just look at him. Dawwwww!
Meanwhile, RLuc has acquired a new and disturbing hobby.
OK, that’s not too bad...
ACK!
“Look, Herea, all I’m asking for is a blow job!”
“It’s just like drinking from a water bottle, I promise. Nothing difficult about it.”
“Ah, excellent.”
We need to get away from the disturbing and creepy manager. CHRISTI TIME!
Chivu loves training! Yay!
Er. Most of the time.
Meanwhile, Maftei was, er, stood around doing nothing basically,
until Acting Captain Radoi came along and made him do press-ups. (Yeah, I can tell that’s DNic from the giant conk, it just fitted well into my narrative.)
Obviously, it wouldn’t be Mirel if he didn’t show off his impressively bendy legs.
He inspired a wave of imitators,
some of whom were, er, more graceful than others.
(That’ll teach him to be more careful.)
Keepers!
Training staff: *Tie bandages around poles and make Lobby jump over them*
Lobby: *Wheezes in agony*
Tatarusanu: *Is really not enjoying this much*
Panti: *Steps casually over bandages that, to him, are ankle-height*
Oh, and does some saves while he’s at it. Multi-talented, that kid.
There was a special guest watching everyone train.
YAY GICA!!1!
RLuc: *Is so embarrassed by the way his team are training in front of Hagi that he commits suicide*
Then there were press conferences. Radoi did this.
Rat was pretty, as usual.
RLuc wore a boring tracksuit top, which still looked good,
and a snazzy suit.
But wait. What’s this?
OMG DACIA ADVERTS!!! LOBBY’S FAVOURITE THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD. (Prosport uploaded these full-size, so I can offer you giant pic 1, giant pic 2, giant pic 3 and giant pic 4. You know you want them. What’s that? You don’t want them? Heresy! Don’t make Lobby run you over with his Dacia.)
Anyway. I suppose we can’t put off the matchspams any longer. Here is Prosport’s predicted lineup for the Albania match; they got it a bit wrong, since Contra started instead of Maftei, and Florescu instead of Muresan.
RLuc in his suit. The chairs were sad.
Here are the lads singing the national anthem in their special T-shirts. Deac is alarmed by Torje’s enthusiasm.
Tamas is tone deaf.
Rat’s forgotten the words and is settling for looking vacant.
And - gasp! - the captain IS NOT CHIVU. (Well, that explains the failure re: the anthem-singing.)
He got a red card against Serbia, if you recall (or even if you don’t), and had to sit out this match. Thus the important message about international peace and cooperation was read out by Radoi. Lobby, meanwhile, is sick with disgust at the Albanian captain’s hair. (LOOK AT HIS HEAD. he has given himself a reverse Mohican. The stripe down the centre is shaved while the rest is long. THE MAN IS MENTALLY ILL.)
Here’s the lineup. Torje’s still eerily keen.
The fans, too, are excited. (The one with the yellow face terrifies me.)
Mutu and Consuelo: less excited. (Think they have enough booze?)
...I won’t even ask what’s going on here. (And they may have been watching Italy, not Romania, but never mind.)
Marica almost scored in the first minute!
Later he actually did score, and it was offside. Not his day.
Contra complained a lot. Everyone ignored him. He also tried fancy moves that didn’t come off. I think he’s getting on a bit for this. (Still love him, natch.)
RLuc: *Takes Contra off for Muresan and slaps him around the head to get him to shut up*
Rat: *Is fouled by Albanian*
...He got revenge.
RLuc: *Picks his nose to inspire the team*
DNic, apart from getting cuddles from Albania’s No. 5, achieved very little and was taken off for Stancu. My response to Stancu’s arrival was, “Who?”
Which proves I am an idiot, because it was him who SCORED OUR GOAL. \o/ (Of which I can find no pictures, because Prosport’s, as usual, are a big watermark and a lot of brown.) He punted it off his toe like a ballerina or something; glorious.
Radoi, although I can’t find a picture worth posting, went off on the golf cart after a marauding Albanian trod on his ankle. That was at the half-hour mark, and they discovered afterwards that it was sprained and he’d been playing on a gammy ankle for an hour. So if he was dodgy, that can probably be forgiven.
I also can’t find a picture of the goal, but Albania scored thanks to Muzaka and drew the match 1-1. (They had a Curri, too. They seem a very food-oriented team.)
RLuc was not impressed.
The crowd were not impressed.
Christi doesn’t do unimpressed, but he did pull his famous “Oh shit” face.
So. We only gained a point instead of, I don’t know, twelve! Dragomir did this:
That can’t be good. The media, as usual, declared Bash A Lucescu Day. Apparently RLuc should have taken Contra off sooner, not started DNic and etc etc etc. (Everyone is particularly angry with Florescu, to my great sadness; I don’t want to lose his hair.) Onlinesport.ro are even claiming that RLuc’s lost the dressing room to a rebellion spearheaded by Rat, Marica and Lobby, and... I’m sorry, I’m cooing so much over the thought of Rat and Marica spearheading a rebellion that I’ve forgotten what I was talking about. Dawwwww. <3
It would be easier to take this stuff seriously if they didn’t say it every time we played, so have a funny piece of Googleromanian instead:
He’s so fit, even the Becalis slash him. Now, that’s power.
Christi couldn’t see the funny side, so at the press conference he cried his eyes out. O_o Behold the meltdown in real time:
Poor sensitive creature. <3 “It seems unfair that Razvan Lucescu, one of the best coaches the national team has ever had, is being humiliated.” Well said, Christi. Well said. (Now sack your agent.)
Anyway, Razvan’s dad still loves him. Now! On to Belarus!
The airport pics are blurry and generally crap.
...Oh, except the ones with Lucescu in. Well, that’s not fair.
Those shoes have got to go.
Nesu and Muresan standing next to each other will never not be funny. (Quite impressed with his glowing shoes, too. Hardcore.)
Observe Contra’s stubborn resistance to all forms of style.
The arrival in Belarus was notable chiefly for psycho!Tamas’s ascent into full-blown insanity.
*Tries to sneak past the fans without being noticed*
*Grinds his teeth and wishes he could murder that woman with the camera*
*Closes his eyes and prays for it all to be over*
DNic was also a target of the Romania fans. Personally, I’m hypnotised by his nose.
Then the squad went shopping in Minsk, the only record of which is this solitary, tiny photo. Boooo!!! (Note theTimisorenii’s determination to wear hats at all times.)
...And it was then that Tamas went completely cuckoo and began receiving telepathic messages from the Martians and the Illuminati. The end.
On to the match. Here’s the predicted lineup, which was accurate this time. Note the absence of Marica, DNic, Contra and Lobby.
This is Bernd Stange, Belarus’s coach. Google Translate calls him “Bernd Strange”; I think they have a point.
The report is going to be rather difficult, since Prosport, in their boundless wisdom, decided to use photos that had been taken at the bottom of a swamp. However, I’ll give it a go. (Here’s a match report.)
Contra: *Complains*
I’m still trying to find a picture of the Belarus fans, four of whom were dressed in red and green sort of like leprechauns, and were playing the drums. Of course, it may just have been an acid trip; it certainly looked like one. The shirtless fans were significantly less pleasing. Please pass the brain bleach.
Christi was our best player, according to Prosport, who used the possibly facetious headline “You play better when you cry”. This despite the fact that the British commentator ion my stream referred to him as “Cheval”. Ladies and gentlemen, Christian Chivu is a French horse.
(Btw, the Belarusians didn’t have food-oriented names, though they did have a player called Shitov.)
Cocis = “Cockess”. Sounds like an X-rated female impersonator.
He had a rather exciting day, what with accidentally kicking a Belarusian in the face and drawing blood, putting the ball a mile over the bar and winning us corners.
(Quite sad about that ball over the bar thing.)
Then he got fed up of football and decided to reinvent himself as a fast bowler.
Radoi: “LOOK OUT, NO. 9! Cocis’s cricket ball is finally coming down!”
(Radoi did manage to come back for Belarus, despite his dodgy ankle. Apart from being called “Reddor” by the commentator, he seems to have had a quiet day.)
...Well. Except when this happened. (Prosport turned this into a poster for some reason; the huge version is here.)
Much to my disappointment, there are few pictures of Panti. *Pouts* Apart from keeping a clean sheet, his best moments were swinging casually from the crossbar like an overgrown Tarzan and bending practically double to bump fists with Rat.
Speaking of whom... He won a free kick for us, and his buttocks are still clubbing gravity into submission. That’s got to be good, eh?
Oh, and he did this as well. I sympathise, Belarusian No. 16; I’d be pulling that face too if someone did that to me. (Fouling people did seem to be our main strategy. We generally seemed to be kicking the shit out of them, as Hleb pointed out afterwards.)
Since Stancu was our only goalscorer in living memory the Albania match, the photogs were pretty interested in him.
Alas, he failed to replicate his performance against Albania, mostly because the Belarusian keeper was INSANELY MAGISTERIAL and blocked everything that went near him. How I hate that man.
Accordingly, there was a lot of this.
DNic went on for him and did nothing.
Bilasco, sadly, was similarly useless;
his shots didn’t even trouble the OMG!amazing keeper because they didn’t go anywhere near the goal. Sigh.
Marica: *Sulks because he only went on at the 82nd minute*
(He had both his shots on goal stopped, but, given that bloody goalie, perhaps that’s not too bad.)
Maftei fouled people and pretended to be injured. (He was responsible for one of the funniest moments of the match, though. When he fell over with a scream near our goal, the medics came running on with water bottles, and Panti promptly nicked one. Then he stood around having a drink, not looking remotely concerned about Maftei’s agonised writhings, since, you know, HE KNEW THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. Chivu, meanwhile, cuddled a Belarusian and patted his face. Wish Maftei would dive more often.)
Chivu was not the only one getting some slash. Lucky Bilasco.
Anyway, then it finished 0-0 and they had to do the Walk Of Shame off the pitch. (Stop saying it’s all right, Christi. It isn’t.)
And RLuc lurked off down his staircase and, er, instantly set off on holiday. He’s not daft.
Here’s the current table for our group:
1. Albania 4
2. Belarus 4
3. Bosnia 3
4. France 3
5. Romania 2
6. Luxembourg 0
The next qualifying match is France on the 9th October, followed by Bosnia and Luxembourg in March.
Note: It is now over a year since Romania beat anyone at home, and we have won a grand total of three games in two years. Now, there’s a cheering thought. So let’s have DNic’s crotch.
