Although they played a friendly match against Koper yesterday, the players of Vojvodina will play a new match in the preparations in Slovenia today. At 6 pm, at the stadium in Stojnci, the rival of the red and whites will be UTA from Arad, the eighth-ranked team of the Romanian championship from last season.
UTA from Arad is known as the Old Lady of Romanian football, and until last year, this club was also called the Provincial Champion, considering that in its history, along with two Cups, it won six titles of Romanian champions, which was a record for a club outside Bucharest, which, with its seventh title last year, it was broken down by the Cluj football club.
UTA was founded in 1945 by Baron Francisco von Neumann. Since he was a big fan of London’s Arsenal, UTA started playing in red and white jerseys, just like Arsenal, which remained official club colors to this day (today’s reserve set of jerseys of this team is gray). UTA stands for Uzina Textilă Arad, which means “textile factory Arad” in Romanian.
This club is considered one of the most successful Romanian teams of the 20th century, which achieved its greatest international success by placing in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Cup in the 1971/72 season. For their biggest rival, UTA fans see the Polytechnic of Timisoara, and the matches between these two clubs are known in Romania as the Western Derby. UTA plays its matches at the Francis von Neumann stadium, with a capacity of 12,700 seats. The stadium was renovated in 2020, and at the time it was originally built, it was considered the most beautiful stadium in Romania.
Vojvodina and UTA have met twice so far in friendly matches. The last match between these rivals was played in the 2011/12 season, and ended with the result 2-2.
As for the current UTA team, the coach of the team is 42-year-old Romanian Ionut Badea, who has at his disposal a team whose value is estimated at around 8.4 million euros. Former player of Vojvodina and current Montenegrin national team player Marko Vukčević, who wore the jersey of the Old Lady from Novi Sad in the 2015/16 season, is currently playing for UTA. In addition to him and the domestic players, the coach Badea has at his disposal three more players from Lithuania, two from Croatia and one each from Brazil, Russia, Albania, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Canada.
As for Vojvodina, the Manager of the red and whites, Milan Rastavac, announced that most time in today’s match will be played by players who had less minutes yesterday against Koper, except for the injured Nemanja Nikolić, Uroš Nikolić and Vladan Novevski, as well as the young Milan Majstorović, who has already returned to Novi Sad due to an injury sustained in the match against Maritsa.
Today’s match will also be broadcast by Novosadska Television, and the match will also be available on the Youtube channel of FK Vojvodina via the link:
