Constantin "Costel" Rădulescu (5 October 1896 - 31 December 1981) was a footballer and manager from Romania who rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s. At one time or another Rădulescu had been associated with the Romania national team as either coach, manager or administrator within the Romanian Football Federation between 1923 and 1938.[1][2]
![]() | This article uses bare URLs, which are uninformative and vulnerable to link rot. (September 2022) |
Personal information | |||
---|---|---|---|
Full name | Constantin Rădulescu | ||
Date of birth | (1896-10-05)5 October 1896 | ||
Place of birth | Cluj, Austria-Hungary | ||
Date of death | 31 December 1981(1981-12-31) (aged 85) | ||
Place of death | Bucharest, Romania | ||
Teams managed | |||
Years | Team | ||
1923 | Romania | ||
1928-1934 | Romania | ||
1935-1938 | Romania |
Rădulescu served as an officer for the Romanian Army during World War I at the front in the Battle of Mărăști between 1916 and 1918 in which he had received injuries to his right arm. In 1919 he featured as a goalkeeper for the Romanian combination at the Inter-Allied Games held at the Pershing Stadium, in Paris.[3]
After the end of the war, Rădulescu played football for SC Olympia București and Tricolor București until 1923.[4] After 1923, Rădulescu switched to refereeing, coaching and administration and was involved in the development of the Romanian football federation in 1930, a development which put an end to the practice of the game being run in his country by a commission.
His first spell as the coach of the Romania national football team in 1923 was cut short, but he assumed that post for a second time in 1928, taking charge of the team after Teofil Morariu's side lost the 1927 Friendship Cup to Yugoslavia by a score of 3–0, and despite losing the 1928 Friendship Cup in his first game in charge, he then led the Romanians into a triumphant 1929-31 Balkan Cup campaign, which Romania won while losing only in Sofia, but scoring healthily in all matches and defeating fellow World Cup entrants Yugoslavia in October 1929.[5]
Rădulescu guided Romania in the nation's first three FIFA World Cups in Uruguay, Italy and France (for the 1930 World Cup Rădulescu was assisted by Octav Luchide). In the second World Cup he acted as a selector and at the third World Cup he was employed as the trainer of the side, but despite his versatility, Romania never went further than the round of 16. In total, he was the manager of the national team on 18 occasions and coach on a further 24 occasions between 1923 and 1940.[6]
Romania managed to participate in the first World Cup due to the enthusiasm and persuasiveness of the Secretary General of FRFA at that time, Octav Luchide. Prior to the tournament, following defeat to Yugoslavia in May, 1930, he dropped Emerich Vogl as his captain and replaced him with Rudolf Wetzer, the Juventus București forward.[7] The apocryphal influence of King Carol II on the selection of the first team is disputed. FIFA accept that "a decree from King Carol gave the players three months off from their jobs and a guarantee that they [would] be re-employed on their return. The king himself [was] also active as coach ..."[8] But there is nothing to substantiate such claims and the king, absent from the nation since 1925, only returned to Romania on 8 June 1930.
During the competition, Romanian coach Costel Rădulescu twice officiated as a linesman in matches featuring Argentina and Uruguay on those match days when the Romanians were not playing.[9] (Ulises Saucedo, the Bolivian coach, also acted as a match referee during the Finals). He assisted as a linesman on other occasions when Romania were playing in the 1930s.[10]
Despite the three disappointments at the World Cups, Rădulescu managed to find some solace in guiding Romania to three Balkan Cup, the first in 1929-31, and the next two in 1933 and 1936, winning both tournaments without a single defeat, and winning the former with 13 goals scored and 0 conceded. With 3 titles, he is the most successful manager in the history of the competition, one clear of Otto Feist who won 2 with Bulgaria.[11] He also won the 1936 Friendship Cup, defeating Yugoslavia 3-2 courtesy of a hat-trick from Iuliu Bodola.[12]
He was a referee for 20 years, directing 200 first-division matches as well as 102 international matches between clubs and 11 between countries. He assisted as a linesman on other occasions when Romania were playing in the 1930s.[13][14][15]
Yugoslavia
Records
Romania squads | |||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Romania national football team – managers | |
---|---|
|