Rapid plan to build all-Romanian team
Troubled Romanian club Rapid Bucharest plan to offload every foreign player on their books and build a squad made up entirely of locals in an attempt to ease their wage bill.
"We renounce all foreigners," Rapid manager Danut Perja told local media on Tuesday. "All of them will receive the documents under which their contracts are terminated unilaterally by email."
Highly-rated Macedonia striker Blaze Ilijoski has already left Rapid while Brazilians Pecanha, Wallace, Glauber, Renan and Figueiredo, Portugal duo Rui Duarte and Filipe Teixeira, Serbians Milos Pavlovic and Nemanja Milisavljevic and Montenegrin Vladimir Bozovic are expected to follow.
Rapid, one of the most popular clubs in the Balkan country, filed for insolvency this month after running up huge debts.
The move could mean the end of professional football for the three-times league champions as Romanian soccer regulations do not allow an insolvent club to have a first-division licence.
The Bucharest-based side, who played in the Romanian Cup final in May, have spent heavily in recent years but their players have not been paid for several months.
Rapid are ninth in the standings with 26 points from 19 games, 21 points behind leaders Steaua Bucharest. (Writing by Angel Krasimirov,
