"I hope that the performances I had as a player, I will also have as a coach." That's the bar Gheorghe Hagi has just set for himself — and given that he led Romania to the 1994 World Cup quarterfinals and starred for Barcelona and Real Madrid, it's an extraordinarily high one.
The 61-year-old has been appointed Romania head coach for the second time, confirmed by the federation on Thursday. He replaces Mircea Lucescu, who stepped down after illness and died on April 7 at the age of 80. Federation president Răzvan Burleanu said it took "several attempts over time" to finally get Hagi back in the dugout. Romania got there eventually.
Why this is harder than the nostalgia suggests
Hagi's first stint as Romania coach — back in 2001 — lasted three months and ended in failure, a playoff exit that cost the team a place at the 2002 World Cup. History is already part of the conversation. His club work since then has been more encouraging: spells at Galatasaray, Steaua Bucharest, and most notably building Viitorul Constanța from scratch into a Romanian title winner. He understands how to construct something. Whether that translates to international management is still an open question.
The immediate picture isn't flattering. Romania won't be at the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico — they lost their playoff to Turkey, the same result that preceded Lucescu's decline. They're ranked 56th in the world. The 2024 Euros run to the round of 16, where they were beaten by the Netherlands, represents the ceiling of recent ambition.
Friendlies against Georgia and Wales in June give Hagi his first look at the squad. Then it's a Nations League group with Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Poland from September — a genuinely competitive pool that will tell us quickly whether this project has legs. Romania's odds of qualifying for the 2030 tournament depend heavily on Hagi finding a system and an identity fast, with qualifying campaigns leaving little room for a lengthy transition period.
The contract, and what it actually demands
He's signed through to the 2030 World Cup, with the explicit task of "bringing the national team back into the elite of world football." That's a five-year mandate — long enough to build something real, short enough that every qualifying campaign matters immediately.
Romania haven't been to a World Cup since 1998. That's 27 years and counting. Hagi built his entire legend on that 1994 run, scoring against Colombia and Argentina before the quarterfinal exit to Sweden. The federation is betting that the man who defined the golden generation can conjure another one. It's romantic. It might even work. But the last time he sat in this chair, he was gone inside a season.
