FC Politehnica Timisoara

The double win over Steaua in 1980 stands as the moment Poli had least room for error: two goals to one, settled in extra time. A generation earlier, in 1958, the team had already topped the table on points alone and still watched the title go elsewhere on goal difference — a technicality that meant the closest brush with a championship never counted as one. Including a 6-0 collapse against Universitatea Craiova in 1981 and a penalty shootout lost to Steaua in 1992, so the two wins from 1958 and 1980 carried more weight for having stayed rare.

The club traces back to 1921, when Traian Lalescu, rector of the Timișoara Polytechnic. What followed was decades of renaming rather than continuity: Știința in 1950, Politehnica again in 1966, then a forced privatisation in 1991. The name kept changing hands after that — a merger with an AEK side from Bucharest, a court order in 2008, an appeal in 2011 that gave them back. None of it saved the original club.

Cosmin Contra started out here before his career took him elsewhere.