Unirea Alba Iulia

Workers in Alba Iulia put a football team together in the summer of 1924 and named it after Michael the Brave. Unirea Mihai Viteazul Alba Iulia, it was called then; the shorter name arrived only in 1970, and after that the club spent decades swapping one name for another — Apulum Alba Iulia through the late 1990s, Unirea again from 2005.

The quarter-final took the club past Steaua. In the semi-final Neluțu Popa scored and Universitatea Craiova still went through, with Gheorghe Bran holding the back line together across both ties.

Twelve years later Aurel Șunda took the side up from Liga II, and under Apulum they finished sixth in Liga I in 2003–04 — the highest the club has ever stood. Șunda came back in 2007 and won a second Liga II title in 2009.

Then the ground gave way. The club withdrew from Liga II before the second half of the 2012–13 season, and in 2014 the original team stopped altogether. What replaced it was a new registration, CSM Unirea Alba Iulia, starting again in Liga V and winning the Alba county fourth tier at the first attempt. Municipal backing was formalised in 2023. Last season Alexandru Pelici took them to the quarter-finals of the Romanian Cup.

Stadionul Cetate holds 18,000, though fewer than half those places are seats. The name means the citadel — the same fortress the city grew around, and the same history the founders reached for when they chose who the club should be named after.