Europe’s most fortunate team
Zero points, no relegation: the club with more escape acts than Houdini
The coronavirus pandemic has produced some rather unexpected season outcomes, and while the biggest losers have been a side from Jersey, the big winners are in Romania.
In English football, the FA’S March decision to declare the Combined Counties Division One season null and void meant the Jersey Bulls lost their promotion – despite clinching it that month, mathematically uncatchable after winning all 27 league encounters.
In Romania’s third tier, one side has had better luck... and not for the first time. In 2016- 17, Pascani survived on goal difference. In both 2017- 18 and 2018- 19, they finished third from bottom, the final relegation place. On both occasions, off- field issues at other clubs meant that, in the end, only two teams tasted the drop.
After several reprieves, it seemed like 2019- 20 would offer no escape. Pascani lost all of their games, scoring 11 goals and conceding 83. It left them on zero points, 17 adrift of safety. They were going down in some style.
“We were expecting a tough season and only played teenagers in the first part,” chairman Bogdan Mandric tells Fourfourtwo. They lost 10- 0 not once, but twice.
“We couldn’t sleep after many of our games,” admits coach Romica Vacaru. “We were losing so badly and it wasn’t pleasant. But we had to carry on – what could we say to the kids in our team? We couldn’t abandon them, the club or the competition.”
Their fate seemed inevitable – until the pandemic hit. After a long wait, Romania’s FA recently decided to end the campaign and scrap relegation from the third tier. Despite their awful record, Pascani had defied the odds yet again. “We’ve been lucky,” says Vacaru, rather understatedly. “We must be close to getting into the Guinness Book of Records!” smiles assistant manager Mugurel Cretu. Given the risk of suffering more miserable form next term, it would be reasonable to ask whether they definitely wanted to stay up. The response is yes – and they even harboured tiny hopes of a turnaround in the final 14 games, however unlikely it appeared.
“I’m happy that we didn’t go down,” insists chairman Mandric. “I always hoped we wouldn’t. In the first half of the campaign we only used kids, but I was optimistic about 2020. We’d signed some interesting new players, and they could have helped us a lot.”
Coach Vacaru is confident as well. “If we can keep the players we signed over the winter and add a few more, we can be the surprise of the season,” he says. “We lost yesterday and might lose today, but we have to believe that tomorrow may be the day we finally win.”