Gloria Bistriţa

For a few years in the middle of the last decade, there was no Gloria Bistrița to speak of. The club that had once lifted the Romanian Cup ran into financial trouble, dropped to the third tier under the name Gloria Progresul Bistrița in 2014, and folded outright in 2015. What came back in 2018 wasn't a resurrection so much as a substitution: a village side from nearby Dumitra, ACS Dumitra, took on the name 1. FC Gloria Bistrița and carried the identity forward. The county took over running the club in 2021, adding Năsăud to the name, then dropped it again in 2025 when the team returned to Liga II as plain CS Gloria Bistrița.

The club these upheavals trace back to was founded on 6 July 1922, and its high point came decades later, in the 1990s. Two seasons after the Cup win, Gloria were back in the final and came away with nothing, beaten 3–1 by Steaua București.

Ciprian Tătărușanu kept goal for Gloria between 2007 and 2009, years before he became Romania's first-choice goalkeeper and won a Serie A title with Milan in 2022. Viorel Moldovan passed through earlier, from 1990 to 1993, capped 70 times and a league champion in both Switzerland and France. Neither stayed long; both left before the club had any way of knowing what they'd become.

Home games are played at the Jean Pădureanu ground, which holds 7,800, in a white shirt at home and blue away.