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Sports ROMANIA Rebirth of a Legend - FC Petrolul Ploiesti By Michael Despite the fact that I truly hate football or anything related to this sport, my whole family is crazy about it, therefore making it impossible for me to stay ignorant to the events happening in this region of activity. Our city’s team is called “FC Petrolul Ploiesti” and it used to be quite famous back in the days, having won against Liverpool on 12 October 1966. Unfortunately, following that great era of success came a rather hard time for our heroes. Having been demoted to the second division, the players and coaches soon lost their will to go on, leaving the team in a miserable state. back from their ashes and although the 2011-2012 was not that good of a season, just getting back into the first division was good enough for them. As of September 2012, with a brand new stadium, staff crew and a huge number of supporters, Petrolul started the 2012-2013 season in high spirits, dominating almost every game in such manner that the other teams were left speechless. It kept going at this pace all the way through and by the end of the season, FC Petrolul Ploiesti had become the number one team of Romania, winning the cup and the love of their 30000 supporters. Four decades later, in 2009, Valeriu Rachita starts coaching the team. The stadium of our team, “Ilie Oana” had also recently started to get built back from scratch forcing the players to rent another place for their official games. It was indeed a hard time, but the boys didn’t falter this time and instead of losing hope, they gained confidence. They rose ! 52