Dumitru Macri (28 April 1931 – 20 March 2024) was a Romanian

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

player and coach.

Club career

Dumitru Macri was born on 28 April 1931 in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

, Romania and started to play football in 1947 at junior level at Flacăra Roșie București. Afterwards he went to play at senior level at

Rapid București Rapid(s) or RAPID may refer to: Hydrological features * Rapids, sections of a river with turbulent water flow * Rapid Creek (Iowa River tributary), Iowa, United States * Rapid Creek (South Dakota), United States, namesake of Rapid City Sport ...

, making his

Divizia A Liga I (; ''First League''), also spelled as Liga 1 and officially known as SuperLiga for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Romania and the highest level of the Romanian football league system. Contested by 1 ...

debut on 19 March 1950 in a 0–0 against Știința Timișoara, ending the

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

on the second place, losing the title in favor of Flamura Roșie Arad with whom they had the same number of points but inferior goal average. He spent all of his career at Rapid București which consisted of 15 seasons in which he was the club's captain between 1952 and 1966, the highlights of this period being another two runner-up positions in the first league, the reaching of two

Cupa României The Cupa României () is a Association football, football cup competition for List of football clubs in Romania, Romanian teams which has been held annually since 1933–34 Cupa României, 1933–34, except during World War II. It is the Romania ...

finals in

1961 Events January * January 1 – Monetary reform in the Soviet Union, 1961, Monetary reform in the Soviet Union. * January 3 ** United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and cons ...

and

1962 The year saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is often considered the closest the world came to a Nuclear warfare, nuclear confrontation during the Cold War. Events January * January 1 – Samoa, Western Samoa becomes independent from Ne ...

under the guidance of coach Ion Mihăilescu which were lost in front of Arieșul Turda respectively Steaua București, also the winning of the 1957 Cupa Primăverii and the

1963–64 Balkans Cup The 1963–64 Balkans Cup was an edition of the Balkans Cup, a football competition for representative clubs from the Balkan states. It was contested by 8 teams and Rapid București won the trophy. Group Stage Group A ---- ---- ---- ---- ...

. In 1961, Macri became the first Romanian footballer to be nominated for the

Ballon d'Or The Ballon d'Or (; ) is an annual association football, football award presented by French magazine ''France Football'' since 1956 Ballon d'Or, 1956 to honour the player deemed to have performed the best over the previous season. Conceived ...

. During his stay at Rapid București, the club relegated twice to

Divizia B The Liga 2, most commonly spelled as Liga II, is the second level of the Romanian football league system. The league changed its name from Divizia B just before the start of the 2006–07 football season. It is currently sponsored by Casa Pariu ...

, but Macri stayed with the club each time, helping it promote back to the first division. Macri made his last Divizia A appearance on 27 June 1965 in a 2–1 victory against Crișul Oradea, having a total of 221 matches with one goal scored in the competition against Flamura Roșie Arad in

1954 Events January * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head ...

with a shot from about 60 meters in an eventual 3–2 loss. During his career, Macri had offers from Bucharest rivals, Dinamo and Steaua, also from Greek club, Panathinaikos but he refused to leave Rapid every time.

International career

Macri played eight games for

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, making his debut under coach Augustin Botescu on 26 October 1958 in a friendly which ended with a 2–1 loss against

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. His second game was a 3–0 victory against

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

at the 1960 European Nations' Cup qualifiers, but his best game played for the national team is considered to be a 1–0 victory in a friendly against

after which a Turkish journalist who saw the game and also was one of the 19 journalists who sent nominations to ''

France Football ''France Football'' is a French monthly magazine containing football news from all over the world. It is considered to be one of the most reputable sports publications in Europe, mostly because of its photographic reports, in-depth and exclus ...

'' for the 1961 Ballon d'Or, chose Macri on his list of nominees sent to the magazine. His last game played for the national team took place on 1 November 1962 in a 6–0 loss against

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

at the 1964 European Nations' Cup qualifiers. He also appeared twice for Romania's Olympic team at the 1960 Summer Olympics qualifiers.

Coaching career

Macri was manager at CFR Timișoara,

and Olt Scornicești in

, also managing in Algeria, firstly from 1971 until 1973 at

RC Kouba Raed Chabab Kouba (), known as RC Kouba or simply RCK for short, is an Algerian football club based in Kouba, a district of Algiers. The club was founded in 1945 and its colours are green and white. Their home stadium, Mohamed Benhaddad Stadium ...

, then the Algerian national team from 1974 until 1975. In 1981 he was Constantin Cernăianu's assistant at Romania's under-20 national team that obtained a third place at the

FIFA World Youth Championship The FIFA U-20 World Cup is the biennial football world championship tournament for FIFA members' men's national teams with players under the age of 20. The competition has been staged every two years since the inaugural tournament in 1977 when i ...

Personal life

Macri's family was of

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

ethnicity. His paternal family comes from Ampelochori, a small village near

Kalabaka Kalabaka (, ''Kalabáka'', alternative transliterations are ''Kalambaka'' and ''Kalampaka'') is a town and seat of the municipality of Meteora (municipality), Meteora in the Trikala (regional unit), Trikala regional unit, part of Thessaly in G ...

, Greece. He left Romania in 1986, moving to France with his son, an architect, being forced to do so by Romania's communist regime who was bothered that he had relatives living outside the country. Macri died on 20 March 2024, at the age of 92.

Honours

Rapid București *

runner-up:

1950 Events January * January 1 – The International Police Association (IPA) – the largest police organization in the world – is formed. * January 5 – 1950 Sverdlovsk plane crash, Sverdlovsk plane crash: ''Aeroflot'' Lisunov Li-2 ...

, 1963–64, 1964–65 *

1952 Events January–February * January 26 – Cairo Fire, Black Saturday in Kingdom of Egypt, Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses. * February 6 ** Princess Elizabeth, ...

1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...

runner-up: 1960–61, 1961–62 *

Balkans Cup The Balkans Cup was an international football competition for clubs from Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. It was introduced in 1961 and was very popular in the 1960s (the 1967 final attracted 42,000 spectators), being ...

: 1963–64 *Cupa Primăverii: 1957 Individual *

(35th place)

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macri, Dumitru 1931 births 2024 deaths Romanian people of Greek descent Romanian emigrants to France Romanian men's footballers Footballers from Bucharest Men's association football central defenders Romania men's international footballers Liga I players Liga II players FC Rapid București players Romanian football managers RC Kouba managers FC Rapid București managers Algeria national football team managers Romanian expatriate football managers Romanian expatriate sportspeople in Algeria Expatriate football managers in Algeria 20th-century Romanian sportsmen