Amazing Rise of Romanian Football Player: Gheorghe HAGI
The Legend of Hagi written by Grigore Caritianu
He is the son of a Macedonian family which had to immigrate two times…He was very poor…He was born in a village, inside the mud, barefood, and began football by running after a ball made of horse-hair. He became a star during Causescu times...But Hagi was able toplay abroad after he was overturned. Here it is…. The legend of Hagi by Grigore Cartianu…
The fall of 1932… 20 horse carriages were put in a row in a dusty road of a small town, Kavala, located at the north of Greece… The courtyard was crowded and people were running around… These people were either Macedonian or Aromen.They were preparing to leave the grounds they borned, perpetually. That is to say, a usual Balkan scene…
Two carriages in the group belonged to Hagi family. Clothes, thick blankets, pans, soil dishes, well-sharpened axes and cheese barrels…Before going their way Gheorghe and Sultana Hagi looked at their fathers’ house for the last time…Raised his fist. He left the people, who have sent them away from their fathers’ home, to the justice of God.
Grandson of a Christian Hadji
In the past centuries, for Macedonians, the name “Hagi” was only carried by the people who have visited the “Holy Mountain”. Since the way through Jerusalem was so dangerous, people who have visited Holy Mountain and turned back were welcomed with a great ceremony. And the title Hagi was added to their names. Hadji, but the Christian one. They have taken this word from Ottomans.For Macedonians, “hagi” or “hagiu” means the person who should be respected and praised.One of the fathers of Hagi had also visited Holy Mountain.As the time passed, the original surname of the family has dissapeared and they used to be called as Hagi.
In the summer of 2005, at a Romanian soccer tournament in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, one of my teammates, a Montenegrin, looked over to me and asked “Steve, did you know that Hagi is Macedonian?” I was in shock. One of my favourite soccer players is a compatriot? It couldn’t be true. Overhearing the discussion, one of the handful of Romanians in front of me turned around and confirmed that Hagi is Macedonian; in fact, this was something well known among Romanians. Then, this past summer, while playing soccer with a team of Turks, again: “Did you know that Hagi is Macedonian, Steve?” My head was spinning-it seemed like the whole world knew about this soccer tidbit but me! I’ve since taken it upon myself to learn more about the Balkan football legend of Gheorghe Hagi, and here’s what I’ve found…
The origins of a star
Gheorghe Hagi, born February 5, 1965 in Constanta, Romania, is the son of a poor Macedonian family which emigrated to Romania from Kavala, now Northern Greece, in 1932. Hagi is the grandson of a Christian “Hadji,” who, for the Macedonians, denoted a person who had visited the “Holy Mountain” via Jerusalem. Forced to leave their ancestral land to make room for 1.5 million Greeks from Turkey as per the 1923 Lausanne Agreement, the Hagi family first settled “Big Kaynarc,” a Romanian village close to the Bulgarian border, before transferring to Sacele, a village in the northern side of Constanta. It was there that, at the age of two, a barefooted Gheorghe Hagi began kicking around makeshift soccer balls, the first made from dried pig’s bladder, the second from grandmother Sultana’s cloth, then from horsehairs, and so on. By the age of 9, he was the youngest of a group of footballers in the Macedonian-populated village of Coiciu scoring goals with real soccer balls, on real nets, beginning to make a name for himself.
