Minaur Baia Mare

The club has rarely stayed still. It was formed in 1947 from a merger of Phoenix Baia Mare and an older club also called Minaur, then spent the following decades cycling through names tied to the mining trusts that backed it — Metalul, Minerul, FC Maramureș — before financial collapse forced it out of existence in 2010. It returned two years later as FCM Baia Mare, folded again for a season in 2016, and came back in 2017 under the original name, Minaur.

The best of it came earlier. A fourth-place finish in Liga I in 1979–80 marked the club's ceiling in Romania's top flight, where it spent seven seasons in total. Two runs to the Cupa României final, in 1958–59 and 1981–82, both ended against Dinamo București. The one night people still bring up is the 1982–83 Cup Winners' Cup tie against Real Madrid: a goalless draw at home, then a 5–2 defeat in the return leg at the Santiago Bernabéu.

On the football side, the fixture that still matters most is local: the Maramureș Derby against CSM Sighetu Marmației, a rivalry that runs on geography rather than history's bigger occasions.