On Friday morning Mircea Lucescu, Romanian coach of the Ukrainian football team Shakthar Donetsk was seriously injured in a car accident in the Drumul Taberei district of Bucharest. According to initial reports, Lucescu – in Romania for the winter holidays – allegedly caused the accident himself by attempting an illegal U-turn across a double tram track. His car was hit by an oncoming tram, knocked out of control and into another oncoming car. Fortunately, neither the driver of that other car nor the driver and passengers on the tram were injured. Lucescu was taken to hospital, and later told he may face criminal charges for dangerous driving.

Since then, the local media has been obsessed with the story. Despite his modest record (he has won just one genuinely important trophy, the UEFA Cup in 2009) Lucescu is generally considered to be the greatest Romanian coach of all time. We would argue that Stefan Kovacs, who won two European Cups back-to-back with Ajax is the rightful holder of that nominal title. Lucescu’s one chance at a top club (Inter, in 1998), ended in failure.

Yet even if Lucescu was the greatest Romanian coach of all time, the fawning, uncritical (Lucescu’s apparent role in causing the accident has by and large been ignored) and constant coverage the case has received is no excuse for the new lows to which the local media has sunk.

Then, just as you thought it couldn’t get any worse, new depths were plunged today when Shakthar’s patron, the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, flew to Romania to pay Lucescu a visit in hospital. With the press following his car to and from the airport and hanging on his every word, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the Pope had arrived.

Still, having read this article, we guess that it is no bad thing to give Akhmetov a bit of good press.

Five years ago or so Bucharest Life was part of a ragtag band of cricket enthusiasts (some of whom could play a bit, others – like ourselves – who couldn’t) who met once a week throughout the summer at the Bucharest Tennis Club to hit a few cricket balls around an artificial football pitch.

Lord’s it wasn’t, but we enjoyed ourselves and by the end of the year a half-decent collective of players had been formed, with a First XI (of which we were not a part) ready to give somebody a game. The Transylvania (don’t ask) Cricket Club was born.

There are now seven cricket clubs in Romania, and another three about to join the Romanian Cricket Association, Consiliul Roman de Cricket.

The Lord’s of Romania is currently being built at Moara Vlasiei.

While we have ourselves not played since that first summer (we know our limits), we have always kept in touch with the Bucharest cricket lads, and as such found out last week that one of the founder members of Cricket Romania, Andrew Begg, had embarked on a commendable initiative to bring cricket to Romania’s children, eyeing up kids in the 8-13 age range to take part in coaching sessions. We asked Son of Bucharest Life if he was interested, he said he would give it a go, so off we went last night to cricket practice. (Something else to file under ‘things we never thought we would do’: Take son to cricket practice in Bucharest in November).

The coaching sessions are held inside a balloon at the Romanian Athletics Association, on Strada Primo Nebiolo in northern Bucharest. The coach is an enthusiastic Englishman, Ben Cook, and the kids a mix of locals and foreigners.

For two hours they play first Kwik Cricket, then have catching, fielding and bowling practice, learning a little about the various things needed to be a decent cricketer. Son of Bucharest Life appeared to enjoy it and said he wants to go back next week.

Cricket Romania are also still very keen on bringing the game to schools: get in touch with Andrew Begg if you would like to make this happen at your child’s school.

As always in the run up to a football match (or any sporting contest, in fact) between two Romanian and English teams (in this case the Otelul Galati – Manchester United game being played in Bucharest at the Arena Nationala tomorrow night) locals are assuming that being English, we of course want the English team to win.

This is not true. Not now, not ever.

While Romanian fans seem happy to shift their allegiances from one team to another, it is just not like that in England.

We are Chelsea supporters. The only English football team we care about is Chelsea. The rest can go to hell. Although we have something of a grudging respect for Manchester United and their manager (which would place United below Arsenal and Liverpool in a list of teams we hate the most) we still draw great pleasure from seeing United beaten.

Nothing would therefore please us more than seeing Otelul stuff Man Utd tomorrow night. It is therefore a shame that an Otelul victory is about as likely as us being made Romanian president. So bad are Otelul (who could only manage a draw at home to the mighty Astra Ploiesti at the weekend) that anything less than a three-goal victory will have to be seen as a failure for United.

Anyway, we will not be going. We’ve given our ticket to our father-in-law in exchange for him doing a bit of painting we’ve been putting off for months.

A fair deal, we think.

While we have certainly not been slow to criticise the cost of building Bucharest’s Arena Nationala – Romania’s new national stadium – we have to admit that we were rather excited ahead of last night’s Champions League game between Otelul Galati and Benfica, the second match to be played at the stadium, and our first visit. (The first, you will remember, was the Romania – France international, a farce owing to the poor state of the new pitch. The pitch played on last night was a different one, and while not perfect – those in new stadiums never are – it was a vast improvement on the original).

The pitch resisted far longer than Otelul's defence

Anyway, it was very much a desire to see the stadium that brought us to the game, and we weren’t disappointed. It really is a job well done, if a job done late and way over budget. Unfortunately, the fact that Galati is more than 200 kilometres from Bucharest, as well as the mediocre nature of the opposition (Benfica have not bothered the latter stages of the European Cup for quite some time) meant that the stadium was barely a tenth full, if that.

Minutes before kick-off, and barely 5,000 seats are taken in a 55,000 capacity stadium. And no, there was no late rush

Nevertheless, the stadium has much going for it.

Access by public transport is fairly good. We took the tram to Piata Muncii and walked the rest of the way, about ten minutes or so. There are plenty of entrances, all are well marked, security wasn’t heavy (although they did confiscate cigarette lighters: take matches next time) and finding your seat is easy. And what’s more – it is a real bonus this – nobody is likely to be in your seat.

One of the reasons we stopped going to football in Romania was the annoying tendency to find people in your seats, who refused to move. We once turned up at a Romania – Hungary game to be told that the ground was full. ‘So who’s sitting in our seats?‘ we asked. The fella on the door just laughed. So we ripped up our tickets, gave him a few lei and he let us in anyway. Those days, we are glad to report, appear to finally be over, at least at the Arena Nationala.

Smoking is banned at the new stadium, and the rule is strictly enforced. You can only smoke in the forecourt behind the seating areas. Try and light up anywhere else and you will be jumped on by security guards very quickly. As it was, hardly anybody had a lighter so nobody could light up anyway. One bloke had brought matches and at half-time ended up lighting the cigarettes of hundreds of people.

The other new rule which is strictly enforced is that sunflower seeds are also banned. Besides lighters, the receptacles at the main security check were full of bags of seeds. While we know that eating seeds at football matches in Romania is a tradition that goes back decades, it is a tradition we are glad to see the back of. Also banned at Brasov’s new ice rink, has the fightback against this curse taken a decisive step?

There is no alcohol on sale, just tea, coffee, non-alcoholic beer, cola, hot dogs and popcorn, which you buy with branded Otelul Galati tokens (a bit like at a concert). Drinks and popcorn are a decent enough price though: one five lei token for half a litre of cola, and the same for popcorn. That’s cheaper than the cinema. Toilets are immaculate, and in fact the whole stadium is almost too clean, too shiny and too new.

Which brings us to the stadium’s biggest problem.

Like most community-owned stadiums, the Arena Nationala is a soulless place. Belonging to the council and not one (or two) clubs, there is nothing to distinguish it from any number of stadiums around the world. Last night it lacked any atmosphere at all. A dull game (Benfica won 1-0) and wide spaces of empty seats didn’t help.

It is also of course a little sad that Otelul are forced to play their matches here. Their own stadium is a neat and tidy affair, which, packed with 10,000 or so locals would be a fearsome place for foreign teams to play. Alas it does not have the requisite commercial space for entertaining freeloaders that UEFA demand of Champions League stadiums.

So it is a qualified thumbs-up we give to Bucharest’s new toy. While it’s magnificent in design and execution, we will be back for the Otelul – Manchester United game in October, and we will be interested to see if it is as easy to get in and out when the place is nearly full.

UPDATE 14.09.2011: Tickets for all three Otelul games, including Man Utd, are now on general sale, here.

So, Otelul Galati have announced the price of tickets for their home games in the Champions League, to be played at Bucharest’s Arena Nationala.

The three games (v. Benfica on September 27th, Manchester United on October 18th and Basel on November 22nd) have all been priced differently (the United game costing the most), but the prices are more than reasonable.

For the Man Utd game, the most expensive tickets are 350 lei (€83), the cheapest just 60 lei (€14). It will be interesting to see how much United fans coming from the UK get asked to pay.

The cheapest way to get tickets is to buy a ‘season ticket’ for all three games: the cheapest is 112 lei (€26.50).

Add in a 40 per cent discount if you registered for tickets before the draw was made (we did) and you have a real bargain.

For those who did not register in advance for tickets, Otelul have yet to announce when tickets will go on general sale. We will keep you posted.