The Nostalgia Files

The Costs of Our Golden Generation

Andrei Mihail (anthropologist, the one researching the history of Bucharest’s neighbourhood football)

“Don’t be afraid, Spikey’s gonna save,” my classmates shouted from the sidelines of the concrete pitch during the final of our school’s football cup as I struggled to defend the shots of our opponents. Their chants compressed two of my defining cultural references from that time. The first was The Offspring, a band I obsessively devoured back then. My haircut, inspired by Dexter Holland’s spikes, brought me the nickname ‘Hedgehog’—hence the adaptation of the much more famous “don’t be afraid, Stelică’s gonna save” (“nu vă fie frică, apără Stelică”) to my doubtful aesthetic choices. This chant referred to the second thing that defined me in the late 1990s: goalkeeping, the position I used to play on my class’s team. Of course, my idol was Bogdan Stelea, or Stelică, Romania’s famous golden generation goalkeeper. Every boy in my class idolised one of the national team players, as we were living through some of the most spectacular successes in its history.

Although I really liked being a goalie, my football glory ended with the single school cup that I won by the time I graduated primary school. I tried to take it more seriously a few times, but my laziness, mediocre skills, and lack of enthusiasm for the automatisms that an athlete must develop made me more of a supporter than a player. By the year 2000, my career was over and left with just a few training days on the pitches of Spartac, FC Național, and ICAR, where I attended some trials.

At that time, the training conditions at small clubs such as Spartac or ICAR were atrocious. Muddy grounds, weather-worn equipment, rusty stands, and stinking locker rooms were the standard of Bucharest’s sports facilities. But they couldn’t have been any different, as their former state funds vanished thanks to the economic realities of post-communism. However, not even a talentless kid like myself had to pay a cent for any of the training sessions. An entire sports infrastructure that covered many of Bucharest’s neighbourhoods was breathing its last breath along with my football career. This allowed me to make my first steps, together with most of the boys in my class and from the neighbouring blocks, towards the great glory that Romanian football still promised at that time. For most, the trip ended shortly, after a few days. For others, those more consistent and passionate, it lasted a little longer, but, with one significant exception, none of my friends became successful football players. In fact, my generation is the last to use these football (infra)structures that reached most of Romania’s youth (mainly boys, to be honest), which contributed to the great results of our football teams in the 1980s and 1990s. Its vast territorial ramifications gave coaches and scouts the chance to spot and train those truly dedicated to performance. It also helped the rest of us develop a taste for football, and all sorts of other sports in general. 

Melting into an Ocean of Souls

Cristina Plecadite (anthropologist, the one who was part of the collective joy inflamed by the national team’s victories)

Thinking about the way we celebrated the victories of the Romanian football team 20 year ago, I would say it was like an ad-hoc ‘tradition’ around exceptional events. If this would happen again now, all of us would know how to recognise the signs and to repeat them in the same manner. I guess it’s deep inside of our collective appetite for celebrating victories and cheerful events.

Back in my student campus days (in Bucharest’s Regie/Grozăvești area), we had the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000. I don’t remember the results, the first 11, or other facts. But I was sure that marching to celebrate the Romanian football team’s triumphs was, at that time, intimately connected with my destiny.

The first step was finding partners for watching the game on a terrace with a big TV screen. As my friends didn’t share my interest and were quite embarrassed by my loudness, exuberance, and over-enthusiasm during games of national importance, I was inclined to join anyone I knew to watch the games. Stranger or not, we sat together at a table, drinking cheap beer and waiting for a miracle to come—for our brave Romanian boys to prove to the (rich) world how good we were. It was a brief—but profound—sense of brotherhood: not fuelled by blood, but by shared hopes, fears, energy, and, ultimately, beer and cigars. There were no barriers in proving the three national colours of our hearts—every goal was the perfect moment for hugs, kisses, creative manifestations. I do not know the poet behind the magic short lyrics “Adrian Ilie este meserie” (meaning, “Adrian Ilie is a pro,” a reference to one of our best forwards of those years) or “Nu vă fie frică, apără Stelică” (“Don’t be afraid, Stelică’s gonna save,” a reference to Bogdan Stelea, the national team’s goalkeeper), but these were so efficient in repairing disasters and creating trust. Besides the common prayers, of course.

And then, the final explosion—Romania showing its genuine face to the world—our football victory was more than sport, it embodied the very way we fought against our destiny, our poverty, our lack of perspectives. And the football players were more than athletes. They were our boys, our fighters, our pride.

Most likely, this is a widespread story around the world. But we were so happy. Everyone was feeling that this victory is a supreme sign that “everything will be just fine” and that a happy future awaited all of us. The victory scream was the sound of reaching the personal and national promised life. How can anyone not follow that sound?

The gathering sound of celebrating this victory was the horn. Actually, an abundance of horns honked by drivers passing through Piața Universității. The cars were filled with people waving Romania’s national flag, waving their happiness, half naked, half outside the cars’ windows. Everyone was invited to follow this happiness road. 

People gathered in larger groups, finally becoming one, and marched in the same direction, celebrating victory, joy, pride, and dreams. We were all part of this magnificent energy and enthusiasm.

I always joined the crowd. Sometimes with a familiar figure, sometimes alone. I was not the type of girlfriend who followed her lover everywhere or the kind of person who was part of a bigger group. I was just a piece of the crowd, rounding off the others perfectly, feeling that we were all equal and strongly connected by our shared football passion and by the same exuberance. I was never afraid, because the strangers were not strangers when we celebrated the triumph together. We were one, allied by our common voice, our hugs and dances, our big flag, and we were also part of the football team’s destiny—our celebration was a mandatory part of the Romanian team’s next success. We watched them play and they watched us celebrating them. “Ne-a pus-o nea Puiu, ne-a pus-o” (“Nea Puiu—Romania’s coach—showed us, he showed it to us”), says Hagi about the video of our celebrations, which they watched in the locker room.

I marched because we felt stronger together—we did not have a war or a revolution or any cause, but we had the Romanian football team, which made us all the same, no matter our education, age, sex, or social status. We were a single heart under a big flag, dancing in the same circle, smiling and protecting each other, full of understanding for extreme gestures, like naked people on the street constructing their manifesto for the world. All those marching, or watching the march on their TV sets, were part of a big and beautiful Romanian heart.

The next day, the big flag was put in a closet, the world was the same, the Earth was still spinning around the Sun, and the problems were still there. But that was our precious magic moment that suspended reality and let our souls taste the pure happiness that gave us the strength to continue. Romania’s football team was our splendour in the grass.

Something Enormously Motivating

Bogdan Stelea (legendary goalkeeper, the one who defended the national team’s post for most of the 1990s and early 2000s) 

Bogdan Stelea is, probably, one of the most loved players of the golden generation. Objectively, his place in history is secured as the goalkeeper who holds the record number of matches in which he defended our goal post. Subjectively, I think, we remember Paulinho Santos’ penalty that he saved in the game against Portugal in the autumn of 1998, his tackling of England’s prodigy Michael Owen in 2000, or the moment he carried an injured Mehdi Ben Slimane off the field in the last match of the group stage against Tunisia at the French World Cup. Fans experienced the victories of those years on the streets, but what about the players? How was the exaltation of those nights felt by the team on the world’s training grounds and stadiums? 

It was an amalgam of feelings. Before anything else, it was the personal satisfaction that we managed to win and have certain results and, naturally, this satisfaction was doubled by everything we saw on the streets, by the joy of the people. This was something different. You can’t compare the two experiences. It hits you pretty hard when you see that so many people are with you and that you made them happy. The joy of those people, I must be honest, meant a lot; it means a lot to see people ecstatic about the things you do.

Iordănescu motivated us with images from back home

It was easier in France [editor’s note: to find out about people occupying the streets after victories]. We were here, in Europe, and we found out things. I could talk on the phone with people back home; videos were also on TV during that World Cup. In the USA however, in 1994, things were more complicated as we were far away, and we saw images only 2–3 days later. I guess somebody sent those from Romania, but I don’t remember exactly how we got them. Videos were recorded on tape and the manager made us watch them. I am talking about excerpts from the news and reports on TVR [ed.: the Romanian national TV station]. I watched them many times. For example, I saw what happened in Bucharest’s streets after we won against Colombia before the match against Argentina; the same happened before the match against Sweden. I saw what they filmed back home after we won against Argentina and qualified for the quarter finals. A lot of people took to the streets. It was something that motivated us enormously, to see so many people happy because of something we did. The moment I saw those images, I stopped thinking about other things, such as the result itself. I was left with people’s happiness.

Ghencea was a special place, a stadium bound for football

We always played on Ghencea because we depended on the crowd’s pressure on the opposing teams during important matches. Ghencea was good for that. Not to mention that it developed a tradition for great results: Steaua played its international games there and won the European Champions Cup, or reached the final in 1989… The audience was decisive in Ghencea and it helped a lot. We continued that trend for the national team. During the most important matches it helped us a lot and there was a lot of pressure on the opponent. We liked that and it motivated us. Moreover, as a goalkeeper I experienced things differently. I had a lot of time to think and that could become problematic. I didn’t put so much physical effort into eliminating pressure as field players did. I stood there for most of the match and sometimes, if I was not feeling well, if my mind was not clear, I thought about all sorts of nonsense and that could have a negative influence on me. The crowd influenced me, it created a certain pressure on me. I had to get used to it and know how to accept and deal with it.

You can’t turn against fans

We also had some tense moments, such as the friendly match against Paraguay we played at Ghencea stadium, before leaving for the 1998 World Cup [ed.: during that match, Stelea gave the audience the middle finger as he was booed after receiving a defendable goal]. We played in Ghencea [ed.: Steaua’s home ground] and, as usual, tifos representing all the teams from Bucharest occupied the stands; I’m talking about Steaua, Dinamo, Rapid. You see, some of the fans sometimes swore at some of my teammates, because they played for rival clubs. I think that happened at that match as well. From my point of view, that moment was also fuelled a little bit by a press campaign that began before the World Cup. I remember some articles in which our businesses, houses, cars were exposed… Everything was exposed. Yes, we had a certain standard of living, but ordinary people couldn’t see the work behind this. There were many shortcomings for most people in those days and it was very easy to move away from the state of euphoria, from encouragement and being on the side of the national team. This quickly led to all sorts of curses and rude things shouted inside the stadium. This bothered me, and I didn’t take it well. But even so, I should have known how to handle those moments. What happened during that match and what I did was a mistake, and I am sorry. That’s how I felt at the time, and that’s what I did in response. Things could no longer be fixed in that regard. The only thing I could do from that moment was to play as well as possible and have good results.

Don’t be afraid, Stelică’s gonna save

This was a slogan from the stands. I must admit, it motivated me at the time. It was a sign of the public’s confidence; it motivated me because it created a state of pressure that kept me awake. By no means did I want to disappoint them. If they sang it, they clearly believed it. I first heard it after the World Cup of 1994, in the preliminaries for EURO 1996, but they also sang it later.

Broadcasting Archives, Nostalgia, and the Golden Generation of Romanian Football

Bogdan Vârșan (historian, the one gate-keeping Romania’s football video archives)

Broadcasting archives: a catalyst for enabling nostalgic momentum

When trying to understand what the word ‘archive’ means, you may encounter two standard definitions. According to the online dictionary of the University of Cambridge, an archive is either a “collection of historical records relating to a place, organisation, or family” or “a place where historical records are kept.” The explanation given by the dictionary may be sufficient for a general idea about the term, but it paints a very rigid and narrow perspective. In a broader sense, the archive can acquire various other meanings. Since this is neither the place nor the time to engage in a more detailed discussion about what an archive is—or what it could be—I will start from the idea that an archive is a kind of ‘collective memory’ depository. Public broadcasting archives are no exception. Enabled by the rapid expansion of television broadcasting networks, the period starting from the beginning of the 1950s is frequently referred to as the ‘century of images.’ 

Meanwhile, nostalgia, initially a medical ailment, is now a debating field for historians, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, as well as scholars in other fields. Even though nostalgic feelings are individual and personal, important public events that occurred in the recent past may serve as a catalyst for nostalgia. To this extent, broadcasting archives, as spaces for storing collective memory, may have a direct influence on already existing nostalgia amongst members of a society. 

Still, an archive by itself does not enable nostalgia. Of course, there is always the possibility of consulting archives by individual means, but, in my opinion, the most effective way to harness media archives is to bring the archive closer to the people instead of bringing the people closer to the archive.

Instead of a conclusion

As a repository for collective memory, broadcasting archives can inspire nostalgic feelings within a society. The golden generation of Romanian football, as depicted in Replay, is one example of this phenomenon. The aforementioned YouTube comments demonstrate that nostalgia is present in two ways: first, as active nostalgia, which is related more to the users’ own youth and the way they experienced the matches, and, secondly, as passive nostalgia, which relates to a ‘sense of loss’ or, as historian Maria Todorova puts it, “an activist critique of the present using the past as a mirror.”⁴