Unirea Dej

Thirty-two years after their first Liga III title, Unirea Dej still had nothing higher to show for it — fourteen years had passed since the last time the team from Dej held a place in the second tier at all.

The club took shape in Dej, a town in Cluj County, in 1921. In the Romanian Cup the club's best runs, in 1971 and 1980, ended in the round of 32, against Universitatea Cluj and SC Bacău.

Promotion in 2021 gave the current side, known to their own as Uniriștii, their first taste of Liga II in over a decade, and a sixth-place finish in the 2022–23 season stands as the clearest sign yet that the club can hold its own there. Goalkeeper Dorian Răilean, capped by Moldova, has become the face of that squad, while forward Alexandru Pop's move to Dinamo București gave the youth system in Dej a rare point of pride to point to.

Matches against Someș Dej, the other club from the same town, carry the weight of a derby with no love lost, even without a name attached to it. Stadionul Unirea holds 6,000, a modest number that has never needed testing by anything higher than the second tier — Liga I remains the one level Unirea Dej has never reached in over a hundred years of trying.