The Moldovan Football Federation (FMF) did not grant FC Florești an N license to play in the Super League next season. The club did not even receive an A license to participate in Ligue 1 (second division). This was preceded by a rather painful period for Florești, when its main players left the squad. And on the pitch, the biggest defeat in the history of official Moldovan tournaments was registered: the Saksan team scored 19 unanswered goals against the Floresti team, breaking a record that had stood for 12 years (in the 2012/13 season, Veris defeated Maiak 17-0).
The club’s management announced plans to build a modern soccer stadium in Floresti, which would be able to host Super League matches. Negotiations were held with representatives of the City Hall to reconstruct the existing municipal stadium and equip it with modern equipment. Within the “European Village” program, the reconstruction of the administrative building of the stadium was completed in August 2024. The project worth 5.5 million lei was financed by the National Fund for Regional and Local Development.
However, the works to modernize the pitch and stands in Floresti were never completed, the team rented a stadium in Bender. The rural stadium in Izvoara, Floresti district, where the team hosted matches until 2019, does not meet the standards of the top division.
Entering the country’s strongest league (at the time, the National Division) in 2019 marked a new era for FC Florești. Founded in the early 2000s, the club had never previously risen above the 2nd division. The management, players and coaching staff saw the club’s new status as a member of the top division as an opportunity to publicly declare their ambitions to compete with the country’s strongest clubs with a more modest squad and budget.
As it later turned out, the club’s management decided to use dirty methods to achieve their goals. In January 2022, an investigative report by UEFA-BFDS (SportRadar) and other analytical companies was made public, stating suspicions of manipulation of the results of six top division matches involving FC Florești. The six face-to-face matches – against Sheriff (Tiraspol), Milsami (Orhei), Zimbru (Chisinau), Petrocub (Hincesti), CSF Speranța (Nisporeni) and Sfântul Gheorghe (Suruceni) – turned out to be contractual. FC Florești was found guilty and was excluded from the National Division by a decision of the Ethics Committee of the FMF.
The FMF’s decision relegated the club to Division A (2nd Division) instead of Division B, which was perceived by many members of the soccer community as too lenient a punishment. Although with similar severity of charges, Italian Juventus were also relegated to the 2nd division in 2006, when the Calciopoli scandal broke out. However, he was additionally imposed 9 penalty points, with which he started the season, and a year later returned to Serie A.
FC Florești needed one more season to win the tournament in the 2nd division and regain the right to play among the strongest clubs. The 2023/24 season ended with the club’s penultimate place in the Super League. However, in the transitional tournament for the right to play in the top division next season, the club was stronger than five of its opponents and qualified for the upcoming tournament.
But in the 2024/25 Super League season, problems began to manifest themselves almost from the start. In August 2024, FC Florești failed to show up for the match against Petrocub, for which it was fined 100,000 lei (50,000 lei each for the failure to show up and for the disruption of the television broadcast, the damage of which was borne by FMF’s partners). In the next round, in which the club hosted Zimbru, the team was fined 50 thousand lei for the absence of a qualified coach on the bench and a failure in the Internet connection, which prevented the live broadcast of the meeting.
At the same time, the first reports about significant delays in the payment of salaries to the players appeared. As a sign of protest, FC Florești players did not take to the field in the match against Zimbru, for which the start of the match was delayed by 6 minutes. Together with the failure to provide FMF partners with the necessary infrastructure for the live broadcast, the club was imposed an additional fine of 35 thousand lei. The total amount of fines that FC Florești received during one month amounted to 185 thousand lei, a large sum for a club that is not financially stable.
At the end of the first part of the Super League, Florești suffered 13 defeats and only one draw (a 0-0 draw with Spartanii Sportul). In 14 matches, the outsiders conceded 59 goals and scored none. The club appeared close to disaster. The allocation of €594 thousand from the Sports Solidarity Fund by UEFA to the club from Floresti did not improve the situation – the players, coaches and technical staff were heavily indebted to the club, which the management has not repaid to date.
At the beginning of March, the head coach Nicolae Turcan, who led FC Florești to the Super League in 2023, the sports director and former player Vadim Chemirtan and the players of the main squad announced their resignation from the team. The players kept faith in the team to the last, took to the field despite significant financial difficulties, and when the situation became critical, made the information public.
Vadim Chemirtan reported that “the club president Vladimir Mania stopped paying salaries to players, coaches and technical staff more than a year ago”. This forced 12 former FC Florești players to appeal to the FMF. And in early April, the Federation obliged to pay all debts owed to players, coaches and technical staff within 45 days. Otherwise, FC Florești will be banned from registering new players in the new season, and participation in any official tournaments will become practically impossible.
Club owner Vladimir Mania refuses to comment. Earlier he reported that “the team is in the process of restructuring”. FC Florești, which currently plays in a transitional tournament with inexperienced players at its disposal, is suffering a fiasco. The team, once struggling with the leaders of the Super League, loses to the clubs of the 2nd division with a 3-4 goal difference.
The situation around FC Florești confirms the unpreparedness of the vast majority of regional clubs to participate in the Super League. The lack of infrastructure, children’s soccer academies, and financial stability cannot replace the grandiose plans of visionaries to realize a fairy tale like the one that happened in 2008 with the German Hoffenheim, a club from the village of the same name (at that time, it is now a district of the city of Zinsheim) with a population of 3,000 people, which sensationally entered the Bundesliga and even led the championship for some time.
Unlike FC Florești, the Hoffenheim club is part of a sports society that unites many sports – soccer, volleyball, wrestling, gymnastics and others. The status of a stable participant in Germany’s top division has been built up over the years, and the club has never been in the midst of scandals.
