Romania Athletics

Saturday at the Rose Bowl, he was the Gretzky of Romania. Actually, for the last 10 years, he has been the Gretzky of Romania. His name is Gheorghe Hagi and his position is star midfielder for the Romanian soccer team that, on this bright and sunny afternoon, shocked Colombia and the rest of the soccer world with a convincing 3-1 win over the flashier and more highly touted South American team.

Hagi's Kingdom The United States will play Romania on June 26 at the Rose Bowl, in what promises to be a critical game, knowing it will have to stop midfielder Gheorghe Hagi, one of the world's top playmakers. Hagi has played in 82 international matches. Sweeper Miodrag Belodedici runs the defense, but Ionut Lupescu and Gheorghe Popescu have also played the position well. Source: Times Staff

The Romanian national soccer team has met the enemy, and it is Gheorghe Hagi's cousin's pizzeria. Hagi, the biggest name in Romanian soccer, the so-called "Maradona of the Carpathians," has connections, and this one figured to be particularly tasty.

* COACH: Anghel Iordanescu. * KEY PLAYERS: Gheorghe Hagi, Ilie Dumitrescu, Miodrag Belodedici. * STRENGTHS: Romania came within a missed penalty kick of reaching the quarterfinals in Italia '90 and many of those players are back. In other words, the team has World Cup experience. Belodedici controls the defense from his sweeper position. Midfielder Hagi is among the most effective playmakers in the world when it suits him.

It is a rainy-misty morning in late spring and at the Stadio Comunale a mongrel puppy is racing around the soccer field where Brescia's second division team is practicing. The players are halfheartedly stretching on the grass, and--grateful for the diversion--allow the puppy to clamber over them with his muddy paws. The brown and black dog, Rocky, belongs to someone who works at the stadium and the players accept him as a mascot, boxing his ears and playfully tugging his wagging tail.

Name: Gheorghe Hagi. Born: Feb. 5, 1965, Sacele, Romania. Height: 5-8. Weight: 156 pounds. Position: Midfielder. Club: Brescia (Serie B, Italy). National team debut: 1983, vs. Norway. Caps (international matches): 81. Goals scored: 21. Little-known fact: Expelled from an international match for spitting on another player. Honors: Twice the leading scorer in the Romanian first division. Led Steaua Bucharest to three club titles.

Considering the United States' impoverished status in international soccer, the host team's challenge in the 1994 World Cup would not have been easy no matter which teams it was assigned to play. But U.S. players, coaches and officials all hoped it would be better than this. "If somebody fixed this for us, I'd like to meet him," U.S.

If soccer games were decided by style points, Romania would have been a decisive winner over Ireland Monday at Luigi Ferraris Stadium in the second round of the World Cup. Instead, the victory went to the pluck of the Irish. Romania's loss, 5-4 in a shootout, was not as much of an injustice as its coach, Emerich Jenei, suggested when he compared it to Brazil's loss to Argentina on Sunday. The Romanians were not that stylish.