Gheorghe Hagi, 58, is the most famous football player that Romania has ever had. Romania has not been to the World Cup since 1998 and they have only gone to the European Championships twice in 2000 but didn’t make it past the first round. They will start trying to qualify for Euro 2024 with two matches against Andorra and Belarus this month.
When Romania beat Colombia, USA, and Argentina to make it to the World Cup quarter-finals in 1994, hundreds of thousands cheered “Hagi for president” out of love. Sadly they lost to Sweden in a penalty shootout, but the huge support stayed strong.
Two years after he chose not to run for president in Romania, people still wanted Gheorghe Hagi. So many of them that they wrote his name by hand on their ballots – he got thousands of votes even though he wasn’t an actual candidate!
Throughout his 29-year soccer career which ended in 2001, Hagi played for Real Madrid and Barcelona and represented Romania by playing 124 matches and scoring 35 goals. People also named him as the ‘Maradona of the Carpathians’. He was placed 4th in the prestigious Ballon d’Or award in 1994. In 2004, Pele, one of the greatest players to ever play soccer, included him in a list of 125 best living footballers.
After retirement from professional football he became a manager and his first job was to manage his country’s national team.
For ‘The King’ Gheorghe Hagi, who is known in Romania, it wasn’t an easy beginning. His team lost to Slovenia in the World Cup qualifiers and couldn’t make it to the tournament which hadn’t happened since 1986.
When he was on the field, Hagi could solve everything with his incredible shots, skillful dribbling or amazing linking passes.
Hagi says he was special because he had a unique personality, excellent soccer skills and he was very fast. He grew up playing with the Dutch team in the 1970s when they were known as “Total Football” and his idol was Johan Cruyff. Whenever he wore the number 10 shirt, it meant that he either has to create or score a goal. This same ambition stuck with Hagi when later on he played for two of the best teams in the world — Real Madrid and Barcelona! His biggest motivation was always to be the best player on the field.
When he first started working in the management, things were a bit tough for him. But things have changed drastically now.
At 58 years old, he is the proud owner and head coach of Farul Constanța; which currently tops Romania’s highest league. Prior to this achievement, he had also worked with prestigious clubs such as Galatasaray, Bursaspor and Steaua Bucharest. In 2009, after completing his work at these clubs, he returned to his hometown Constanța on the Black Sea coast with one major goal – to make Farul Constanța the best team possible.
He used his own money and borrowed some more to begin an academy. More than £10m was invested for the project which was to create a generation of Romanian footballers who could possibly win the World Cup.
At training, Hagi showcases his excellent dribbling skills and passes to educate young players. Whenever he walks past, their faces light up with admiration.
When the academy was first opened, 200 kids from all over the country joined and a hundred people were hired to staff it. The academy took control of a third-level club named Viitorul Constanța, and they kept on winning promotions until they reached the top division. In 2017, something amazing occurred – Hagi’s team won the championship trophy in Romania. Two years later they also grabbed the cup title. Recently in 2021, Hagi’s own Farul Constanța merged with this academy, which is where his football career began when he was just 10 years old.
A big chunk of money made by Hagi when he was a professional soccer player is now used to fund his own club. Farul is one of the youngest teams in Europe, where they focus on developing younger players. Recently, Hagi decided to give a fourteen-year-old the chance to play in their first game of their league.
Hagi purchased Viitorul Constanta, which overlooks the third tier level in 2009 and eventually, eight years later, they won the title for Romania.
A lot of teens who have done well in the past have gone overseas to join teams like Ajax, Fiorentina, Brighton and Rangers. Almost half of Romania’s adult team were once part of coach Hagi’s team and even more played for its youth teams. One young player from the academy is Hagi’s own son Ianis, now 24 years old. He has been playing at Fiorentina and Genk before he recently moved to Rangers.
Gheorghe Hagi, a good player, said that he could do well anywhere. Ianis won an award for being the best young player at Rangers before getting injured in January 2022. If Gheorghe never got to play in England, then maybe Ianis would be able to – who knows? Gheorghe missed two opportunities of playing in England’s Premier League and was disappointed about it; he likes and respects the country England. He also believes that his style would have been enjoyed by English fans.
In the 1990s, Tottenham and Newcastle tried to sign footballer Hagi but were beat out by Barcelona in 1994. Two years later, Galatasaray offered him a great project right near his home.
Hagi said he would’ve loved playing under former football manager Kevin Keegan at Newcastle since he was one of his idols growing up. But when Dutch coach Cruyff personally invited him to join Barcelona, Hagi couldn’t resist – He even said that Hagi was his favorite number 10!
I chose Galatasaray because they wanted to make a better team than everyone else to win in big competitions. Also, it was closer to my home country, Romania. Therefore, I thought it might be easy for me to go back home after playing football.
I wrote a book that talks about how I play football. The way I do it is to focus on simple things first, then gradually move onto the more complex ones. My motive in all of this is to win, not just to survive. That’s why I’m trying to inspire others with my methods and thoughts. The thing that really inspired me was Cruyff and all the great things he did, so I learned a lot from him.
Hagi’s academy works hard to help two players join the first team each season and doesn’t mind how old those people are. Hagi himself says he was lucky enough to be taught by some great teachers who helped him progress in his own career, so he wants to do the same for others too. He believes everyone deserves a chance!
Plus, this is his way of giving something back to football as he always felt grateful. The academy is located on a farm that used to belong to someone else outside Constanța which is close to the sea.
The academy is near Constanța, a city of more than 300,000 people on the Black Sea coast. Before Hagi’s project came there, the area was used by farmers to pasture their cows and sheep.
Hagi has been promised that a new 20,000-seat stadium will be built in Constanța as part of the project. The Romanian government will be spending nearly £100 million to have it finished by 2025.
Hagi said that he returned to his birthplace Constanta, because it was the place where he started out. He wants to create champions and believes in the talents of Romanian players. According to him, if you are going to achieve success, you must believe in your work and set big goals without fail. Hagu himself scored three goals while playing for Romania during the USA 1994 event and among those one goal was crucial enough to win the tie against Argentina.
