As a follow up to The Lost Champions of Romania piece earlier this week, once again in conjunction with Chris Oakley we reimagine the strips of the country’s many extinct former champions and how they might look were those clubs still active today. Chris had some really unusual historical precedent to work from and as a result we have quite a splash of different colours and styles.

In our idealised retro football world team shirts would be unsullied by the vulgarities of commercial sponsorship, but we accept that it’s a necessary evil in the modern game and have duly allocated one to each of our Romanian former champions that tries to tap in to their histories. A quick round-up of what’s what:

Our original article explained how a number of the earliest Romanian champions were clubs associated with oil companies so it’s appropriate their modern-day counterparts follow similar paths. Romano-Americana Bucharest (1915 champions) carry the Shell logo, United Ploiesti (1912 champions) take Romgaz and Prahova Ploiesti (1916) sport Petrom as their shirt sponsors. In the capital Olympia Bucharest (1910 & 11) and Colentina AC carry the names of major Romanian cash and carry retail groups while Venus (8 time champions between the wars) promote the expanding Bucharest stock-exchange. Unirea Tricolor (1941) associate with a very familiar name in football sponsorship what with the tyre maker Pirelli having a major presence in the capital.

For a club that was formed as a sporting extension of a university, we could only ever give Universitatea Craiova (1974, 1980, 1981 & 1991 champions) their original non-commercial sponsor as a commercial one this time around. It’s increasingly common these days for universities to market themselves outside their locale after all. Finding a sponsor for Unirea Urziceni (2009) was difficult seeing as they are based in a tiny town with very little in the way of commerce or industry. Instead we opted for a tourism sponsor as a means of promoting the wider region in which Urziceni is based. The rest of the clubs from industrial Romania all adopt vehicle and heavy machinery sponsors.

Click any of the designs below to enlarge: