Romania Reminsciences draft.

Introduction

Ben was on a journey that he would never forget. He'd heard about the country of Romania for

sure. Unfortunately, a lot of it was negative, connected to Communism and all of its consequences. And then, of course, there was football. Without football, Ben's knowledge of the

world would have been poorer. But as it was, he was well clued up on geography having watched matches from all sorts of places. Bucharest was certainly one of them. He had vague

recollections of Rapid Bucharest, whose players, fortunately, weren't so rapid as to give West Ham the run-around.

And then, there was the World Cup. Ben was old enough to remember red-shirted players giving some Columbians a few problems. Lacatus was one of them, if Ben wasn't very much mistaken.

A funny name if ever there was one, Ben had thought at the time. Ireland had put pay to their progress in the end, though.

Next, there was the World cup in the USA. This was a golden time for the Romanians' golden

generation. There had been a aw though. They'd allowed some players into the team whose surname didn't end in -escu, which had obviously disrupted team unity and led to their

quarternal exit. I mean look at Bulgaria, hardly anyone who's name didn't end in -ov ever got into the team and they made it to the semi-nal and, by Ben's reckoning, really deserved to be

in the nal, which they could have won. They even beat Germany on the way.