Mihai Ionuţ Butean

Two Liga I titles sit on Butean's record from his time at CFR Cluj, alongside five league appearances for the club's first team. He arrived there on a free transfer in July 2019 and spent almost all of the following three years elsewhere: eighteen months at Gaz Metan Mediaș, then a season at Chindia Târgoviște. The Gaz Metan loan came with a buy option of €150,000 that was never exercised, and he played 45 league matches over the two campaigns there. He also collected a Supercupa României in 2021.

The route in was Universitatea Cluj, where he spent a decade in the youth ranks from 2005 and made his senior debut in Liga II in 2015–16, playing 29 league games. Astra Giurgiu took him a year later, sent him to Academica Clinceni for a season, then used him 39 times in the league before he left as a free agent in 2019. He was capped three times by Romania's under-21s between 2018 and 2019 and has not played for the senior side.

Hermannstadt was where the pattern broke. Signed in 2022, he started regularly and made 74 league appearances across two seasons.

Vojvodina signed him on a free transfer in June 2024, on a contract running to 30 June 2027, and he took the number 16 shirt in the Serbian SuperLiga. He has 40 league appearances and two goals for the club, and has finished as a runner-up in the Serbian Cup in both seasons since arriving — 2024–25 and 2025–26.