Euro 2008 Player Profile: Adrian Mutu

Name: Adrian Mutu
Team: Romania
Group: C; France, Italy, Netherlands
Caps (Goals): 60 (27) as of May 6, 2008
DOB: January 8, 1979 (29 years old)
Position: Striker
Club Team: Fiorentina

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear “Adrian Mutu” is “cocaine.” You know, the white powdery stuff that goes up your nose. After joining Chelsea for £15.8 million (€22.4m) of Roman Abramovich’s money in 2003, Mutu tested positive for cocaine in 2004. He was banned from football for seven months and Chelsea terminated his contract.

But things have picked up since then.

Though he was disgraced in England, Italy remembered Mutu fondly. He had joined Chelsea from Parma where he’d had a good season, and before that had played for Verona and Inter. So Fabio Capello took a chance on Mutu and picked him up for Juventus in 2005. Bargain. Seven goals in 32 games doesn’t sound great for a striker, but for a striker playing in midfield - in Serie A - it’s damn good.

After the Calciopoli business and Juve’s relegation, Mutu moved to Fiorentina for €8 million (the man’s agent must be living comfortably if he’s seeing a % of all these moves) and became a striker again, and he’s bagged 33 goals for the Viola over the last two seasons.

The great thing about Mutu is that he doesn’t just score poacher’s goals. He’s not Pippo Inzaghi. He scores goals like this:

Look for him to be standing over all Romania’s free kicks this summer, in what will be only Mutu’s second tournament (he went to Euro 2000 as a youngster, but Romania failed to qualify for WC 2002, Euro ‘04 and WC ‘06.)

No doubt Romania are in the toughest group of Euro 2008. When people call Group C the Group of Death, they mean because either Italy, France or the Netherlands won’t make it out. Everyone already assumes that Romania won’t. But maybe they just haven’t seen this video:

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