Daniel Pancu
Daniel Gabriel Pancu ( born August 17, 1977 in Iaşi, Iaşi county ) is a Romanian football player. He is since January 2011, at Rapid Bucharest in the Romanian Liga II under contract.
Club career
Pancu began with 11 years in the youth of Politehnica Timişoara on, his first position was goalkeeper, later he played as a striker and stuck with it. In 1995 he was brought into the first team of the second division and played an outstanding season, led to the rise in the Divizia A. Three years he remained in Timişoara. Rapid Bucharest became aware of Pancu and signed him. There he was top scorer and had a large share in winning the championship in 1999. During the following season he moved to Italy at that first division side AC Cesena. There he remained for a year, but was rarely used and changed again in 2000 to Rapid Bucharest. In Rapid he found his old form and in 2002 in Turkey Beşiktaş Istanbul. In 2003 he was there to mark the centennial anniversary of the club champion. In 2005, he played like the whole team a mediocre season and reached Beşiktaş only finished fourth.
After the first round of the 2005/06 season he was awarded his homeland to Rapid Bucharest, where he came in the second half on 13 season games in which he scored two goals. Then he moved for one and a half years again in Turkey, this time to Bursaspor. For the second half of the season 2007/ 08 he returned to Rapid Bucharest. From summer 2008 until January 2010 Pancu played in the Russian first division club Terek Grozny. In January 2010 he moved together with his team-mates Florentin Petre to the Bulgarian first division club CSKA Sofia. In the summer of the same year he returned to Romania and joined the FC Vaslui. After only half a year and only five appearances in the first round of 2010/11 he returned to the winter break again back to Rapid Bucharest. With Rapid he qualified for the Europa League. He repeated a year later this success. At the same time he moved into the Cup final in 2012, but it lost to Dinamo Bucharest 0-1.
In the summer of 2013 Pancu was relegated to the Liga II with Rapid. He remained the club also in the lower house faithful.
Curiosities
Matchday 28 of the 2004/05 season, in an away game at Sukru Saracoglu Stadium, even after the Kadıköy district of Istanbul Stadium against Fenerbahce Pancu replaced in the 80th minute Besiktas goalkeeper Oscar Cordoba after he received a red card and the exchange quota of Beşiktaş was already exhausted. Pancu delivered a decent performance, holding some Shots of Fenerbahçe player. In the fifth minute of stoppage time then shot Beşiktaş player Koray Avcı the winning goal for Beşiktaş. Pancu was nicknamed " Kadıköy Panteri " ( The panther of Kadikoy ) and contributed as a regular field player the following season 's jersey with the number " 1 " on the back.
National
Between 6 October 2001 and June 4, 2005 Pancu also played for the Romanian national football team (at times even as captain ), scoring nine goals in 27 games there.
Achievements
- Romanian champions: 1999
- Turkish champions: 2003
Others
On 22 December 2008 Pancu was stopped by police in Iaşi with 1.36 per thousand driving his cars and then had to give up his driver's license.