Sunday, November 20, 2011

Costea Brothers

The most promising Romanian strikers are Mihai and Florin Costea.

Florin Costea is the elder brother. He was born on May 16th 1985 in Dragasani, Romania.He started to play Romanian second league for the local team Rarora Râmnicu-Vâlcea, then he transferred to the most popular team in Romania, Universitatea Craiova, who competed at the time in the same league.

After his new team was promoted, he became one of their key players and one of the best strikers of the Liga I. The 2008/09 season was great for Florin, finishing the top scorer of the Romanian first division, together with Gigel Bucur after both had scored 17 goals. On March 21st 2010, while playing a match against Politehnica Iaşi, the Moldavian goalkeeper made a rash challenge on Florin Costea, injuring him. He was forced to leave the pitch, and realising the severity of his injury he was taken out in tears. It was later discovered that he had broken his medial collateral ligament and crossed ligament. He was sidelined for 8 months. After Universitatea Craiova was disaffiliated he became a Free Agent.

On 3rd August 2011 Florin Costea moved to Steaua Bucureşti on a free transfer, later signing a 4-year contract, worth around €250,000 per year. Here he rejoined his brother Mihai Costea.

Mihai was born on May 29th 1988. He played for Universitatea Craiova's youth team. In 2008 the player was promoted in the first team, where he joined his older brother. Though his favorite positions are Striker or Winger, due to lack of players at Universitatea Craiova he was often used as a Left Midfielder. This usually brought criticism to Universitatea Craiova officials.

Mihai Costea was transferred to Steaua Bucureşti for a reported transfer fee of €1,4m for 60% of the players rights. But, due to the fact that Universitatea Craiova was disaffiliated by the Romanian Football Federation on July 20th, 2011, Steaua Bucureşti now owns all the rights of the player. He had a perfect start, scoring three goals in his first three games with the Bucarest team.

Mihai Costea was a Romania U-21 international being capped thirteen times and scored one goal against Latvia U-21 on 14 November 2009. In Romanian first football league, Mihai played 89 games and scored 17 goals. In UEFA Cup he played 4 games and scored 1 goal.

Until now, Florin Costea played 121 games in Liga I and he scored 48 goals. In Cup of Romania he played 7 games and scored 4 times. He also played 3 games in UEFA Cup and scored 1 goal. For Romanian national football team he played 7 games.

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