Marius Popa

Marius Cornel Popa (born 31 July 1978 in Oradea, Bihor County) is a Romanian former football goalkeeper. He played a total of 210 matches in the Romanian 1st division.

Career

Association

Popa’s career began in his home country with FC Bihor Oradea. He was part of the professional squad there from the 1997/98 season. Three years later, he decided to move to FC Național Bucharest in Divizia A. There, he was initially part of the reserve team squad or was only a supplementary player in the 1st team. In 2003 he made his breakthrough and became a regular bench keeper. In the winter break 2004/05 a change to FCU Politehnica Timișoara took place. He was followed at the same time by his coach in Bucharest, Cosmin Olăroiu, as well as his teammates Gabriel Cânu, Gabriel Caramarin and Gigel Coman.

In Timișoara, he was initially the undisputed number 1. In the final of the Romanian Cup against Rapid Bucharest, he could not start due to injury and lack of form. At that time he was replaced by Costel Pantilimon. However, Pantilimon did not perform consistently either, and Popa quickly returned to the Poli goal

After being replaced by Pantilimon at the start of the 2008/09 season, Popa did not feature again and moved to promoted side Internațional Curtea de Argeș at the end of the season. When his new club’s license was revoked a year later, he moved to league rivals Pandurii Târgu Jiu at the start of the 2010-11 season. After half a year, he moved on to Universitatea Cluj. He ended his active career there in 2012.

National team

Although Popa showed good performances in League 1 early on, he had to wait a long time for his call-up to the Romanian national football team. At the beginning of 2008, he was allowed to stand between the posts for the first time for his country. He made his debut in the match against Russia. He was nominated by national coach Victor Pițurcă for the 2008 European Football Championship in Switzerland and Austria, but did not make any more appearances after that.

Web links

• Marius Popa in the database of weltfussball.de
• Marius Popa on romaniansoccer.ro (English)
• Profile at EM-08.info