Club Atletic Oradea
Club Atletic Oradea , commonly known as CA Oradea , or simply as CAO , is a Romanian football club based in Oradea, Bihor County, which competes in the Liga IV.
The team was founded as Nagyváradi Atlétikai Club in 1910, when the city was part of Austria-Hungary. Over its history, CA Oradea won the Hungarian national title, the Romanian national title, and the Romania national cup on one occasion each. The Romanian title won during the 1948–49 season, under the name of ICO Oradea, meant that the team became part of a select group of entities that won the national title in different countries.
After World War II, the communist regime in Romania had a negative impact on the club's identity, forcing it to change its name and colours several times. In 1945 it was renamed Libertatea Oradea, in 1948 Întreprinderea Comunală Oradea , in 1951 Progresul Oradea, in 1958 CS Oradea, and in 1961 CSM Crișana Oradea.
Dissolved in 1963 by the same communist regime, CA Oradea was re-established in the summer of 2017 as a private entity. In the same year, CA Oradea was enrolled in the fifth tier, and three years returned to the national divisions after 58 years of absence.
History
Early years, on the road (1910–1940)
The game of football had arrived to Nagyvárad in 1902 together with inhabitants that returned from study or work, from abroad or from Budapest. The first football match that was ever played on the banks of Crișul Repede river was a friendly one and was held in the Rhédey Garden. The game was gaining in popularity fast, but there was not yet an organized club to represent the town in matches against other towns. This organizational problem led to the establishment of Nagyváradi Sport Egyesület, then appeared Nagyváradi Torna Club, both multi-sport clubs, but none focused mainly on football. Then, eight years after that first football match played in Oradea's history, Nagyváradi Atlétikai Club – in Romanian: Club Atletic Oradea was established, also a multi-sport club, but with the football section as the "pearl of the crown".The constituent assembly was held on 25 May 1910, in the EMKE Café, a place that also had an important contribution in the identity, bohemianism and cosmopolitanism of the football club. EMKE Café, translated as the Coffee Shop of the Hungarian Cultural Association of Transylvania Coffee Shop, was the place where the Oradea's cultural elite spent much of its time, one of the main clients being the well-known poet Endre Ady. Back to the football club, the first board of directors was formed of: Dr. Emil Jonas, Béla Mikló, Andor Szabo and Dr. Kálmán Kovács, one of the decision took also in that first day was to submit the documents for registration at the Hungarian Football Federation.
On 31 July 1910, NAC played its first game, against KVSC, and in January 1912 a home ground was secured, in the Rhédey Garden. The next month, a touring team from England came to town: Bishop Auckland, the Northern League champions that season, NAC won with an incredible 8–0. Before World War I, the club activated only on local and a regional level, they joined the eastern division of the Southern Hungarian League and in 1913 NAC won 25 out of 31 matches. One of the most important games for the local community, in this period, was the match against Hungarian giant, Ferencváros, played in Nagyvárad, on 6 July 1913 and lost honorable by NAC, with the score of 2–4.
During World War I, the football competitions were suspended, and the club suffered from the lack of activity. However, friendly matches and different sporting activities were held, even in that tough situation and with all the problems generated by world conflagration.
After the war, by the Treaty of Trianon Nagyvárad became part of Romania and officially became Oradea. The club and the city were still dominated by Hungarians. One of the most talented local players unearthed during this period was Elemér Berkessy.
The team joined the Romania national championship in 1921–22, but NAC – now also known as Clubul Atletic Oradea – was beaten in the "fight" for Town of Oradea champion title by Stăruința Oradea and then by Înțelegerea Oradea for the first few seasons, thus did not qualify for the national finals until 1923–24. They beat Universitatea Cluj and Jahn Cernăuți, before it was defeated in the final by Chinezul Timișoara – who would win the first six Romanian titles after the Great Union.
In 1932–33, after another spell confined to the regional tournament, CAO appeared in an expanded national competition, organized as two parallel leagues of seven teams; they finished second in their division, while local rivals Crișana Oradea came third in the other one. Two years later,
with the national league reorganized into one division, CAO finished as runners-up, sandwiched between the two dominant clubs of the period, Ripensia Timișoara and Venus București. In 1938–39 the club was relegated to a restructured Divizia B, where they remained until the next war brought a strange upturn in fortunes.
In 1932, the management of the club decided that contact with football in other countries would help the development of the sport in Oradea. So, they undertook a twelve-match tour in France and Switzerland, during which they beat Olympique Lillois, who would become in that season the inaugural French national champions, and obtained a 3–3 draw against Marseille. In the following year, the tour was in France and its North African colonies, and Oradea was spreading its fame with 21 victories and 4 draws, 110 goals scored and only 23 conceded. During the interwar period, CAO supplied eighteen Romanian internationals, however the majority were still ethnic Hungarians, Jews and Germans.
Players who starred in CAO's green and white stripes in this period included: Ferenc Rónay, the first ever goalscorer for the Romania national football team ; Nicolae Kovács, a forward who was one of only five men to play at the first three World Cups; Iuliu Baratky, a Hungarian from Oradea who opted to stay in Romania throughout the World War II, becoming a legend at Rapid București and Iuliu Bodola, a prolific goalscorer throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. Bodola was transferred to Venus București in the Romanian capital in 1937.
Club Atletic Oradea's team that participated in the 1932 and 1933 Tours of France, Switzerland and North Africa was formed of: Ștefan Czinczer – Andrei Glanzmann, Iosif Bartha, Vasile Chiroiu, Iuliu Bodola, József Moravetz, Coloman Braun-Bogdan, Elemér Kocsis, Nicolae Kovács, Ferenc Rónay, Takács, Kraus, Nicolae Roșculeț and János Remmer.
The Romanian-Hungarian champion (1940–1949)
The Second Vienna Award in August 1940 annexed northern Transylvania, including Oradea, to Hitler's ally Hungary, while Romania was in the throes of its own right-wing military dictatorship. Many footballers of German or Hungarian origin who were at clubs in Bucharest, Timișoara, Arad or other parts of Romania, crossed the new border into this region and joined clubs in Oradea or Cluj-Napoca ; many of them signed for CAO – now, once again, known officially by its Hungarian name, NAC. After one season back in a Transylvanian league, NAC was promoted to the Hungarian top division. They finished second in 1942–43 and then in 1943–44 they became the first team from outside Budapest to win the Hungarian championship in its 43-year history, finishing a huge 13 points ahead of the second placed team Ferencváros.The players who helped the club to this historic achievement included some major Hungarian and Romanian footballers of the age:
Gyula Lóránt was only 20 years old during NAC's title-winning season. He went on to play at Vasas, alongside László Kubala, who in 1949 fled the incoming Communist government and formed a team of Hungarian footballers who would play exhibition matches around Western Europe. Lóránt tried to escape and join Kubala, but was captured and interred, until the national team coach secured his release. Lóránt played for Hungary from 1949 until 1955, encompassing the greatest period of Hungarian success: he played in central defense for the Aranycsapat, the Mighty Magyars of the early 1950s. Besides winning the Romanian championship with UTA Arad and three more Hungarian titles with Honvéd, Lóránt went on to coach Bayern Munich in the late 1970s.
Iuliu Bodola or Gyula Bodola was an ethnic Hungarian born in what is now Brașov in 1912. After a hugely successful seven-year spell as a prolific striker with CAO in the 1930s, and an equally fruitful three years at Venus București, he headed back to Oradea after the annexation of northern Transylvania by Hungary in 1940 and played for NAC for five years. After the war, he moved to Budapest and represented MTK Budapest. During his years in Romania he played 48 times for the Romania national football team, while from 1940 to 1943 he was a regular for Hungary national football team. Remarkably, he held the Romanian international goalscoring record for 66 years, from 1931 until 1997, when Gheorghe Hagi overtook his total of 30 goals. The municipal stadium in Oradea is now named after him.
József Pecsovszky known in Romania as Iosif Petschovschi or simply ‘Peci’, was another young member of the successful NAC team and was capped by Hungary at the age of 21. An attacking midfielder from Timișoara, of Hungarian extraction, Peci would later become a hero in Arad due to his starring role in UTA's three league titles in the 1940s,
and then won two further championships with CCA București in the 1950s. His first game for Romania was against Hungary in Budapest in 1945, alongside Spielmann and Simatoc; he scored, but Hidegkuti and Puskás scored two each in a 7–2 win for the Magyars. Pecsovszky is one of the all-time greats of Romanian football.
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Francisc Spielmann, known in Hungary as Ferenc Sárvári, top-scorer for NAC in their title-winning season, with 23 goals; he was also the Hungarian player of the year.
The coach of the side throughout NAC's Hungarian period was 1920s CAO hot-shot Ferenc Rónay.
Gusztáv Juhász, also spelled as Gustav Iuhași, had been a regular in midfield for the Romania national football team since 1934, when he was also part of the CAO team that finished second in the Romanian championship. Together with Bodola and Rudolf Demetrovics, Juhász was part of the great Venus București team of the late 1930s.
Nicolae Simatoc, a reserve, was the only ethnic Romanian in the NAC squad; he was kept out of the starting line-up by the all-Timișorean midfield of Petschovschi, Demetrovits and Juhász. Simatoc eventually would go on to spend one season alongside Kubala at FC Barcelona, as well as two years at Inter Milan.
The 1944–45 Hungarian season was abandoned after four games due to the movement of the front, and NAC never played in the Hungarian league again: Northern Transylvania was occupied by Soviet and Romanian troops in 1944 and later reverted to Romania at the end of the war. NAC/CAO changed its name to Libertatea Oradea in 1948, and then to ICO Oradea the following year after the Soviet takeover of Romania. Petschovschi, Bodola and Ronnay left for Ferar Cluj – the third-placed team in Hungary in 1943–44 - while five of the championship-winning team would form the core of a new dominant power in Romania, ITA Arad.
By 1948–49, only three players remained from the great NAC team of 1943–44. And yet ICO Oradea became Romanian champions. Gheorghe Váczi, an ethnic Hungarian who was capped by Romania, contributed 21 goals in 26 matches. They also had names such as Vécsey, Spielmann, Vasile Ion, Bodo, Zilahi, Serfözö or Mircea David and the coach in that year was Nicolae Kovács, former CAO player and brother of the Ștefan Kovács who would coach Ajax to great success in the early 1970s.