EMMET MALONElooks at the colourful and controversial times of Steaua's owner Gheorghe "Gigi" Becali

STEAUA BUCHAREST may have been European champions in 1986 but as they prepare to take on St Patrick’s Athletic in the Europa League tonight some of the problems facing the club would sound all too familiar to supporters of the League of Ireland while others are somewhat more exotic.

Sure, unpaid taxes are an issue while the ongoing crisis in the property and financial market have robbed its colourful owner, Gheorghe “Gigi” Becali, of much of the fortune he has used to bankroll the club over the past decade.

Becali, though, has also been distracted of late and not just by the decline in the value of an empire that began with a highly-controversial land swap with Steaua’s landlords, the Romanian army. Elected at the start of the summer to the European Parliament after several failed attempts to win public office, he is in the news daily in Romania as he weighs up a possible run for president.

In the meantime, though, his attempts to take his seat in Strasbourg have been hindered by court orders intended to prevent him leaving Romania while he awaits trial on a series of charges arising out of an incident in January when three men were apparently caught trying to steal his €115,000 Mercedes.

Witnesses reported seeing Becali’s bodyguards bundling the men into the boot of his car at gunpoint on a busy road and one was shot in the leg.

The 51-year-old, who regularly takes off in his private jet to pray at Mount Athos, the holiest site in Eastern Orthodoxy before big games and whose office is dominated by a life-size portrait of himself as St John in the desert, spent two weeks in jail while the incident was investigated but was released for the election campaign in which he ran on the far right Romania Mare (Greater Romania) ticket. He subsequently claimed he was the “real victim” as the thieves had been trying to extort money for the return of his vehicle.

It is not the shepherd-turned-property-magnate’s only legal problem. He still faces the possibility of charges in relation to allegations of an attempt to bribe another Romanian club to prevent CFR Cluj winning the league the season before last.

Steaua’s traditional rivals are fellow Bucharest giants Dinamo with the former’s official status as the club of the army during communist times and the latter’s close ties to the police (and infamous Securitate) giving rise to an endearing game of political cat and mouse in which the club offices and high ranking staff were bugged, players coerced into joining one or the other, and match officials along with third party clubs cajoled into throwing games and entire championships.

In the eyes of supporters, the pair’s rivalry endures although the Romanian FA’s decision to start using a lot more foreign referees has led to Cluj and, most recently, the even more obscure Unirea Urziceni, getting to lift the title.

The latter beat Steaua at their ground, the Stadionul Ghencea, at the weekend, and their manager, former Chelsea defender Dan Petrescu, credits Unirea’s success to the use of overseas officials.

Steaua, as it happens, only finished sixth last year with the club still reeling from their owner’s attempt to halt Cluj’s success of the previous season. Becali, a somewhat intolerant type, has been the subject of various investigations (and the odd fine) by the National Council for Combating Discrimination over his comments on gays (he feels they should, as sinners, live in special areas where they could not bother the rest of the population) and blacks (he called a local television presenter of African descent an “ape”).

So, it should come as no great surprise that he appeared to take particular exception to Cluj’s sudden rise as the Transylvanian outfit is owned by ethnic Hungarian businessman Arpad Paszkany, prompting Becali to claim that its funding came from foreign freemasons.

Though the latest polls give him just 12 per cent support among voters in Romania, he has certainly been a popular figure among a particular element of the club’s support.

However, his interference in the way the club is run has not always been popular. He averages a first-team coach every eight months and threatened to do the job himself last May. In the end he appointed current boss Cristiano Bergodi instead but many have not forgiven him for the resignation a couple of years back of Gheorghe Hagi, who described managing Steaua while Becali was in charge as “torture” and predicted that the billionaire would “destroy” the club.

St Patrick’s Athletic, with what suddenly seem like rather modest problems by comparison, will be just be hoping that they can fuel the fire by causing an upset this evening.