Central Stadium of the National Football Center

The pitch at Buftea belongs to a federation, not a club, and that shows in what it was built to do. The Central Stadium of the Romanian National Football Centre sits inside a complex the Romanian Football Federation has owned outright since setting it up in 2010, roughly twenty kilometres northwest of Bucharest.

It opened on 6 September 2011, and the federation did it quietly: Sepp Blatter came for the ceremony, alongside prime minister Emil Boc. The contract had gone to the Israeli firm S.C. Baran România, signed off in November 2009 without an open tender.

What the stadium is for explains its shape. On the central pitch itself, the split continues: natural turf on one side, artificial on the other, visible from the stands rather than hidden behind advertising boards.

S the ground often turns up under a shorthand, Stadionul CNAF, rather than its full name, a habit that has stuck without ever becoming official.