FC Timişoara vs Manchester City
Kick-Off 20:00 (BST)
Hamburgled
It doesn’t seem like five minutes ago since I sat here (well, somewhere else altogether actually, but indulge me) compiling a similar report for our second leg UEFA tie at Eastlands against SV Hamburg in April 2009.
That was our last foray amongst Europe’s (semi-) “elite” so there is quite a nice circularity in the fact that once again I am trusted with the tardy wordsmith’s task of previewing this; Manchester City’s first ever Europa league contest.
It is with much excitement that I and, I imagine most other Blues, approach this start of what we hope is a thrillingly significant period in the club’s history. The club has, this week, announced that the spending is finished for the summer and we are left eyeing, openmouthed, the bounteous riches with which City are now blessed.
Last time around we had a young, British manager who was still getting to grips with life at City under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour but who had started to put his own stamp on the squad he had inherited from Sven’s period in charge at City.
Mancinations
The pace at which Manchester City have galloped forwards since then is mirrored by the degree to which (in little under two years) the club has a new, suave Italian in charge and the team that started against Hamburg is relatively unfamiliar. Of those who took to the field over the course of that night at the City of Manchester Stadium that night; Dunne, Onuoha, Elano, Caicedo, Fernandes, Sturridge and Ireland have departed (with the futures of Robinho and Shay Given still far from certain).
The team that almost edged Hamburg that night, in fact, only has four certain survivors (Zabaleta, Kompany, Richards and Bridge) although the smart money would be that only 2 or 3 of those players would be likely to feature this evening.
In place of the old guard have come a raft of big names and an array of pulsating footballing talent. Any City fan of post late 60’s vintage surely pinches him/herself at the sight of a squad list that now includes the names of global superstars such as Tevez, Adebayor, Silva, Yaya Toure, fans favourites like Nigel de Jong, SWP, Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta and new faces such Mario Balotelli, James Milner, Adam Johnson and the likely to be absent Kolarov and Boateng.
Despite this massive influx of talent and increasing optimism/expectation amongst City fans the team and its nature is still a huge unknown quantity. Last season saw Roberto Mancini accused in many quarters of an overly cautious footballing style and strategy (considering the attacking talent within the City ranks). Many observers and fans alike gave Mancini the benefit of the doubt due to last season’s need to challenge for the top 4 and the fact that the team he inherited from Hughes was not “his”.
Mancini has added steel, guile, ambition and a touch of madness to his playing staff and expectations upon him to both achieve but also do so with style are ratcheting up.
Accordingly, a theoretically winnable opening Europa League tie against relatively unknown quantities from one of Europe’s non-elite leagues is likely to be an arena where many put Mancini and his footballing approach under the microscope. Will he come out and try to put the Romanians to the sword or will this be another chapter from Mancini’s “stop them from scoring and take it from there” footballing handbook.
One of the factors that will ultimately determine the answers to these questions will be the nature of the challenge put up by tonight’s opposition. So we should attempt to answer the question; Just who are FC Timisoara?
The club with no name
City’s opponents hail from Romania, more specifically from the western part of Romania in the Banat region.
The club (formerly known as AEK Bucharest and before that as Fulgerul Bragadiru) is most renowned for the disputes that rage over their name and history due some apparent jiggerypokery undertaken by their current owner. In essence you could think of them as the Romanian version of MK Dons, with a slight twist.
The former Timisoara club (Politechnica Timisoara) re-located from their home city to the capital Bucharest in 2000 and then promptly sank down the leagues to the fourth tier in Romania.
Meanwhile, our opponents’ owner (Anton Dobos) decided in 2002 that his team should move themselves to Timisoara to fill the void in the football public’s heart left when Politechnica upped sticks and moved to Ceaucescu’s neighbourhood. However, in addition to a simple relocation he took the rather interesting decision that the club would really capture Timisoaran hearts and minds should it also change its name to something altogether more familiar.
Thus was born (the snappily titled and football chant friendly) FC Politechnica AEK Timisoara who also decided that they should adopt the badge and colours of their now fourth division-based predecessors.
For some reason, the owners of the lower league outfit took issue with this and launched a series of legal proceedings which ended with the Court for Arbitration for Sport. A paltry fine was handed out initially but ultimately the club were ordered by FIFA to stop using the badge, name and colours and were docked six points domestically, which led to this…..
Despite all this kerfuffle, most local fans adopted the educationally ambitious nickname of Poli (and we shall be hoping there are no kettle songs this evening) and regard the club as a continuation of the old Poli. FC Timişoara, The club went on to became one of the six most popular football clubs in the country.
Since being promoted to the top division in Romania in the 2002/2003 season the club has consistently recorded the league’s highest average home attendances.
From a footballing perspective, FC Timisoara finished runners up in both domestic league and cup last season so this should be a competitive evening even if I cannot give you much of a sporting preview from their perspective.
The teams and the match
Timisoara look likely to start with 11 players, one of whom will be a goalkeeper. They only have six foreigners within their squad so my prediction is that most will be Romanian. Interesting for fans of the vintage Romanian international team led by Georghe Hagi, very few of their squad have surnames ending in “u”.
City are hampered by a couple of injuries (notably at full back with Bridge, Kolarov and Boateng out for this game) but look likely to set up with Mancini’s old favourite of 4-3-3.
In terms of personnel it would surprise no-one is we started with Hart in goal a defence of Richards, Toure, Kompany, Zabaleta, midfield of Barry, Yaya, Vieira and a front three from Tevez, Balotelli, Adebayor, Johnson, Jo and SWP
Prediction
We will get a bit of momentum and take them 1-3.
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