The Double, the Heartbreak in Bulgaria, and the Fight to Save Romania's European Season

Universitatea Craiova won everything at home last season, then almost lost everything in Bulgaria within weeks of the new campaign starting. What happened between that gut-punch and now says a lot about the state of Romanian football heading into 2027.

There's a particular kind of cruelty in football scheduling that Universitatea Craiova knows all too well right now. In May, the club from Oltenia completed a genuine double, the league title and the national cup, capping off a season most Romanian clubs would consider a career highlight. Barely six weeks later, they were on a plane to Bulgaria, three matches into defending that success, staring down elimination from the Champions League against a team most casual fans had never heard of. What happened next, and what's happened to Romania's other three clubs competing in Europe this season, tells a story that's a lot more interesting than a simple "here's how the new season is shaping up" preview. How Craiova Actually Got Here Winning a domestic double is hard enough on its own, but Craiova's version of it had real drama baked in. The league title, their fifth in club history, came down to a championship round where they finished first overall. The cup was even tighter. In the 2026 Cupa României final in May, played in Sibiu, Craiova needed extra time and then a penalty shootout to get past Universitatea Cluj, eventually winning 6-5 from the spot after the match itself couldn't separate the two sides. Nicușor Bancu, the club's veteran defender, was named man of the match in front of nearly 12,000 fans, a fitting cap to a season where Craiova had genuinely outplayed every domestic rival that mattered. That double meant Craiova, for the first time in the club's modern history, would enter the Champions League qualifying rounds rather than the Conference League or Europa League. It's worth pausing on how big a deal that actually was. Historically, Romania's Champions League slot has almost always gone to either FCSB or CFR Cluj, the two clubs that have dominated the domestic scene for the better part of two decades. Craiova forcing its way into that conversation, purely on merit, was as much a statement about the shifting balance of Romanian football as it was about a single trophy. For a club that spent years playing catch-up to Romania's traditional powerhouses, walking into the Champions League qualifiers as the country's actual champions wasn't just an achievement. It was proof the old hierarchy in Romanian football had genuinely cracked. Then Came Levski Sofia Craiova's European campaign opened well enough. They dispatched Belarusian side ML Vitebsk with a decisive 4-1 away win to get their qualifying run started, the kind of confident result that suggested the double-winning form had carried straight over into the new season. Then came the second qualifying round, and a Bulgarian opponent that turned out to be considerably tougher than anyone expected. Levski Sofia won the first leg, and in the return match at Craiova's own Ion Oblemenco Stadium, the Bulgarians raced out to a two-goal lead inside the first sixteen minutes. Craiova clawed one back right before halftime through Bancu, and Adrian Rus leveled things from a free kick in the second half, but the 2-2 draw on the night wasn't enough on aggregate. Levski advanced. Romania's reigning double champions were out of the Champions League before August had even properly started, a result that stung considerably more than a routine early qualifying exit usually would, given exactly what Craiova had just accomplished at home.

The Bounce-Back: Beating KuPS and Staying Alive

Here's where the story actually gets interesting, because instead of folding after a genuinely deflating exit, Craiova dropped into the Europa League third qualifying round and delivered exactly the kind of response their double-winning season suggested they were capable of. Facing KuPS Kuopio from Finland, Craiova drew the first leg away 1-1, then handled business at home in Craiova with a 2-1 win, advancing 3-2 on aggregate to reach the Europa League play-off round.

That win matters more than the scoreline suggests. It guarantees Craiova a place in the group phase of at least one major European competition this season, either the Europa League itself if they get past their next opponent, or the Conference League as a consolation if they don't. Their reward for beating KuPS is a play-off tie against Ararat-Armenia, the reigning Armenian champions, who themselves pulled off a mild shock by eliminating Zimbru Chișinău in the previous round. It's a winnable tie on paper, and Craiova will go into it as clear favorites, but after the Levski Sofia result, nobody at the club is likely to be taking anything for granted.

Meanwhile, Romania's Other Clubs Had an Even Rougher Time

If Craiova's story is one of heartbreak followed by resilience, the other three Romanian clubs competing in Europe this season have had a considerably harder time finding the resilience part. FCSB, the country's most decorated club by trophy count, was eliminated from Conference League qualifying by Latvian side Auda, losing the aggregate tie 7-3 across two legs after a 4-1 defeat in the deciding match. For a club with FCSB's history and resources, an exit that lopsided against a team from a considerably smaller footballing nation is the kind of result that gets dissected in the Romanian press for weeks.

Universitatea Cluj, the beaten Cupa României finalists from May, fared little better in their own Conference League playoff, losing 5-3 on aggregate to Norwegian side Brann after a 3-1 defeat in the second leg. CFR Cluj, meanwhile, at least avoided outright elimination in their opening qualifying tie, drawing 1-1 with Armenian side Alashkert, though a draw against a club from a significantly lower-ranked league was hardly the dominant statement Romania's most successful club of the past decade would have wanted to make.

Why this matters beyond bragging rights

UEFA's country coefficient, which determines how many clubs a nation gets in European competition and how favorable their qualifying paths are in future seasons, is built directly from results like these. A rough qualifying campaign across multiple Romanian clubs in the same summer doesn't just sting individually, it chips away at the country's overall standing relative to leagues like Bulgaria, Armenia, and Latvia, all of which just handed Romanian clubs a difficult month.

Back Home, the Liga I Race Is Already Taking Shape

While all that European drama unfolded, the domestic season kicked off on schedule on July 18, 2026, with sixteen teams contesting the 109th edition of Liga I. Craiova has been managing the balancing act familiar to any club juggling continental football with a demanding league campaign, cycling through squad rotation while trying to stay sharp domestically. A 3-1 win over Voluntari in late August kept them competitive at the top of the table, while CFR Cluj's own domestic form got a boost from a 1-0 win over FCSB in a heavyweight clash between two clubs still smarting from their European exits.

The promoted sides, Corvinul Hunedoara, Csíkszereda Miercurea Ciuc, and a third club coming up through the play-off route, add fresh storylines of their own to a league that already features one of Europe's more compressed, physical, three-way promotion and relegation battles at the bottom of the table. With Argeș Pitești playing home matches away from their own city due to stadium redevelopment, and Corvinul Hunedoara doing the same, the 2026-27 season is shaping up to be one where off-pitch logistics matter almost as much as results for a handful of clubs.

What Craiova's manager change last season still explains

It's worth remembering that Craiova's double didn't happen under one manager from start to finish. Mirel Rădoi led the club through the first half of the 2025-26 campaign before Filipe Coelho took over in November, and it was Coelho who ultimately guided the team through the championship round and the cup run to the title. That mid-season transition, often a red flag for clubs chasing silverware, instead became part of the story of how deep Craiova's squad and infrastructure had actually become. It's also part of why the Levski Sofia exit felt so jarring: a club that had just proven it could handle a coaching change mid-title-race suddenly looked shaky against a considerably less decorated opponent just weeks into the new campaign.

What's still at stake for the rest of the season

Craiova's play-off tie against Ararat-Armenia is the single biggest remaining question mark for Romanian football's European hopes this season. Win it, and Craiova secures Europa League group-stage football, a considerably bigger financial and prestige boost than the Conference League consolation prize waiting if they lose. For a club that's already proven this year it can bounce back from disappointment once, doing it again on the biggest remaining stage of their European campaign would go a long way toward cementing this season as a genuine breakthrough for Romanian football's newest heavyweight, rather than just an asterisk next to an otherwise difficult continental summer for the country as a whole.