See Steaua Bucharest appear in the Champions League rankings? A mystery for football fans in 2025. Yet this unique coronation of the Romanian club could be summed up in one name, four stops and a quarter of an hour of apotheosis. Four years after the famous “Night of Seville”, the “Hero of Seville” was born. On May 7, 1986, Helmuth Duckadam dived three times to his right, once to his left and his gloves always found the trajectory of the ball during this historic penalty shootout against FC Barcelona (0-0, 2-0 on the tabs).
“Urruti”, the opposing goalkeeper, may have deflected two Romanian attempts, which can already be considered an achievement, but it is not enough to eclipse the work of Duckadam, who thus places his club at the top of Europe for the first and only time in its history. Some 39 years later, Matvey Safonov produced a similar performance on the admittedly much less glittering stage of the Intercontinental Cup on Wednesday. The opportunity to revisit the trajectory of the “Star of Seville”, extinguished in December 2024.
His recipe for such a miracle: goalkeeper psychology and total concentration on “every shot on goal”. “That’s why I didn’t realize that we had won the match after Barcelona’s fourth shot,” he told Eurosport in 2022.
Thrombosis
This fabulous “clean sheet” in the C1 final was enough to transform Duckadam into an icon of Romanian sport. It earned him a line in the Guinness Book of Records and 8th place in the Ballon d’Or rankings. This sequence also offers breathing space to footballers and the Romanian people, at the time under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. “When we returned the next day, more than 15,000 people were waiting for us at the airport,” said the guard in 2013. “It was a fantastic atmosphere that you only experience once in your life, or even never. »
This observation applies more to the case of the Romanian than to anyone else. On the evening of the final, the evil that will saw off his wings is already implanted in his body, then aged 27. “A few months before the final in Seville, I had pain and numbness in my right arm. After several examinations, the doctors were unable to discover this blood clot, the goalkeeper reminded Eurosport. If they had found it, I wouldn’t have played in the Seville final. I was lucky to play her. »
Emergency surgery two months later, he narrowly escaped amputation. “The doctors managed to save my arm but my career was over,” he explained in 2022, two years before his death. His cap count with the Romanian team remains stuck at two caps. He only returned to the pitch three years later, in D2 at home in Arad.
A car and a visit from the police
But this diagnosis of thrombosis does not convince everyone. To explain the fall of Duckadam, different stories circulate. He was allegedly shot dead by the regime after receiving a car from the King of Spain.
A less fanciful version – but plausible given the context – is relayed with more conviction. It is even transcribed in “Free Arbitre, Eleven Fair or Disloyal Stories of World Football” by Dominique Paganelli. On the evening of the Champions Cup final, an emissary from Real Madrid allegedly promised the main character of this story a Mercedes 190E. A gift from the president of “Casa Blanca”, Ramon Mendoza, as a thank you for the pleasure of seeing the Barcelona rival defeated on the last step.
This car would have driven Nicu Ceausescu, the dictator’s youngest son, crazy with jealousy. Faced with the guard’s refusal to give him the car, the latter allegedly sent Securitate to the footballer’s house. The men of the political police then allegedly broke his knuckles, his wrists and his career in the same movement. Another story involves a chainsaw, logging and an accident, but in the end, the mystery persists and the result is the same. That of a premature end of career.
Subsequently, Duckadam became the president of Steaua Bucharest, which became FCSB after a legal battle with the Ministry of Defense. He died in December 2024. “When I no longer exist, my grandchildren will still be able to be proud of the name Duckadam, of the fact that I have achieved something in my life,” he told AFP.
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