CS Universitatea Craiova

Why there are two clubs with almost the same name

This is the first thing to get straight, because it confuses everyone including Romanians, and because most pages about it quietly pick a side.

There are two separate football clubs in Craiova whose names both derive from *Universitatea*:

• CS Universitatea Craiova, run by Mihai Rotaru, playing at the Ion Oblemenco stadium. Its football section was refounded in 2013 under the long-standing sports club.
• FC U Craiova 1948, run by Adrian Mititelu, founded in 2017, which claims to continue the club that was disaffiliated.

What is settled. In September 2017 the High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled definitively that Clubul Sportiv Universitatea Craiova is the same legal entity that has existed since 1948, and that it holds the name and the notorious trade mark — the lion crest. The professional league then accepted that the name, crest, colours and record were contributed by that sports club.

What is not settled. The ownership of the historic *palmares* itself went to the Timișoara Court of Appeal, which ruled for CS Universitatea Craiova in July 2023. That decision was not final: the High Court admitted the appeal, quashed it in part and sent the case back to the same court to be heard again. As things stand it is being re-tried.

So: the name and the crest are decided. The trophies are still in front of a judge. Anyone telling you otherwise — in either direction — is telling you how they would like it to end.

What this site does. We use *Universitatea Craiova* for the club at the Ion Oblemenco, because that is what the name and crest rulings say and what the city means in conversation. Where the record is disputed we say so, as above, rather than printing a trophy count as settled fact.

What the club means to the city

Craiova is a city of about 230,000 people that reached a European semi-final. That sentence is doing a lot of work, and it is why football here is not a pastime but the civic argument.

The side of 1979 to 1991, known as Craiova Maxima, won the league in 1973–74, 1979–80, 1980–81 and 1990–91, took the double in 1980–81, and in 1982–83 became the first Romanian club to reach a UEFA Cup semi-final. The season before, it had reached a European Cup quarter-final.

The semi-final itself — 0–0 away at Benfica, 1–1 at home, eliminated on away goals without losing a match — is told properly in Craiova Maxima and the 1983 semi-final. Forty years later it remains the thing the city measures itself against, and the reason a provincial ground fills.

The Ion Oblemenco stadium

Named after the striker who was the club's great goalscorer, and rebuilt from scratch on the site of the old ground.

The old stadium came down in 2015 and the new one opened in November 2017 — with a friendly against Slavia Prague on the 10th, and an official ceremony before the first competitive match later that month. Capacity is a little under 31,000, which makes it one of the largest football grounds in Romania, and it cost somewhere around €50–55 million depending on which account you read.

It is also, as the city's own press has reported, expensive to run: the municipality has not had a profitable year from it since it opened. That is worth knowing because it is the background to every local argument about what the stadium is for.

Going to a game is covered properly in matchday at Ion Oblemenco — the ground, parking, and where to eat and drink before and after.

What this page does not publish

No league table, no fixture list, no squad.

Not an oversight. Those change weekly, this site has no feed for them, and a stale league position is the single most obviously wrong thing a club page can display. Everything else here — the court rulings, the 1983 run, the stadium — is stable enough to state plainly, which is exactly why it is here and the table is not.

For the current position, the fixture list and tickets, go to the club's own channels and the Liga Profesionistă de Fotbal. They are the only versions that are right today.