Blue Collar Clubs and Masked Professionalism – the Foundation and Charm of Hunedoara County Football during the Interwar Period
Cluburile muncitorești și profesionalismul mascat, fondarea și farmecul fotbalului hunedorean în perioada interbelică

Summary/Abstract: In 2019, CFR Simeria, the oldest football club from the current Hunedoara county, celebrated its 110th anniversary, while the county’s best performing one, Jiul Petroșani, turned 100 the very same year. The Union of Sporting Athletic Clubs in Petroșani (Jiul’s ancestor) and Jiul Lupeni (Minerul Lupeni’s predecessor) played two finals of the National Championship prior to 1932, when the matches were still organized according to the regional system. Moreover, Jiul Petroșani and Mica Brad were the only teams in Hunedoara County to play in Division A, from 1932 and until after the end of WW2, during a time when the teams would play in a divisionary system, at national level.Despite this, the historiographic contributions dedicated to the beginning of football in Hunedoara County are quite scarce, being actually inversely proportional - in terms of numbers - to the popularity of football clubs, the abundance of information on the subject and to the complexity of the realities of that period. The purpose of this article is to lay out the general framework of the beginnings of football from Hunedoara county, by identifying its roots, as well as by presenting the activity and performances of the main football clubs involved in this sport during that time. The intention is to also point out that both presences in Division A during the interwar period were somewhat by luck, since Jiul used a favorable reform of the competitional system to advance further up the ranks, while Mica Brad took advantage of the suitable circumstances created by the actions of Hitler’s Germany. Moreover, this article will also focus on some elements of specificity in the football from Hunedoara county during the interwar period, by highlighting the input blue-collar clubs had in this sport, and also by shedding some light on the lesser known aspects of the masked professionalism embraced by these clubs. The primary and original source of information for this article is the print media of the time, namely the Ecoul Sportiv, Gazeta Sporturilor and Universul Sport newspapers.

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