Romania appoint from within

The Romanian Football Federation (FRF) has appointed Nicolae Manea as coach of the national under-21 team. He replaces Ilie Dumitrescu who resigned from the post earlier this month.

Third coach in two months
Manea, who will retain his job as co-ordinator of all national youth teams, becomes Romania's third U21 coach in the last two months. Ion Moldovan resigned in September to be replaced by Dumitrescu who left the job after just a month. In an effort to achieve some consistency, the FRF has stipulated in Manea's contract that he cannot leave the post until 2005 regardless of any offers he may receive.

Poor start
Romania have made a poor start to their UEFA Under-21 Championship qualifying campaign losing 2-1 against Bosnia-Herzegovina and 1-0 to Norway before beating Luxembourg 2-0. The emphasis is now on a victory in their next game - Manea's first - against Denmark.

Difficult task
"I was told that the [FRF] wants continuity at this level," Manea said. "I know how difficult my task is. If we fail to qualify, I'll drop most of the players and use younger ones for the rest of the qualifying games in order to prepare those players for the future. However, for the time being, we will not abandon hope of qualifying. After the game against Denmark, we will reassess."

Rapid links
The 48-year-old Manea played 209 games and scored 42 goals in the Romanian first division, most of them for FC Rapid Bucuresti. As a coach, he had spells in charge of Rapid in 1996 and Ceahlaul Piatra Neamt in 1998.