Romanian tells Andrew Smith that Inverness is the perfect place to get international admission
'TURN right up at the end of the road. When you get to the roundabout make sure you take a left, because the right will put you in Aberdeen," says Marius Niculae, before he breaks off, laughing, at the absurdity of a Romanian only months in the coun
try navigating for a native Scot. Apologies follow. "Don't worry, I have quickly learned all these roads," he offers. The 26-year-old striker has also learned to rationalise the career path that has taken him to Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the pursuit of a place at Euro 2008.
Absurdities abound with Niculae. His pedigree appears way out of kilter with his current posting. Even if he is the current player of the month – following a six-goal scoring flurry across December – going into today's home game against Rangers that should earn him a first real crack at the Ibrox league leaders.
A full, scoring internationalist by the age of 18, Niculae bagged 50 senior goals with Dinamo Bucharest while still a teen. He then earned them a record £1.5m transfer fee on joining Sporting Lisbon, whom he played for in the 2005 UEFA Cup final. His four years in Portugal were bedeviled by injury. These problems forced a move to Standard Liege in Belgium before an ill-fated eight months with German club Mainz put Inverness on his road map to the Austria and Switzerland finals.
Niculae has been out off the international reckoning since he earned his 28th cap against Colombia 18 months ago. It seemed crackers then that the Romanian could consider the Highlands the footballing hotbed to re-ignite homeland interest in abilities that have brought him 12 goals for his country.
Equally, a sponsorship deal through Inverness chairman Alan Savage, whose company have business interests in Romania, that earned Niculae a £5,000-a-week salary appeared a preposterous risk on a player who had lost his way and took four months of this season to net a league goal. As of the past six weeks, though, there seems method in the madness of both striker and club.
"I didn't worry it wouldn't happen for me because I continued to work hard and kept the confidence of the manager," the 26-year-old says. "Every time he would tell me 'the goals will come, one of these days the goals will start to come.' It didn't surprise me when they did, it just surprised me that the award followed. I owe thanks to the supporters for that. They kept trust in me and appreciated my performances even when I didn't play so well and didn't score."
Yet with more lucrative offers from Serbian champions Red Star Belgrade and Bursaspor of Turkey, and a return to his former club on offer, why Inverness, a team he had never heard of, playing in a league that isn't exactly revered in Europe? The answer is enough to make Scottish football followers feel good about themselves.
"I was sure that this was the best opportunity to get to Euro 2008 because people have heard of the Scottish championship through Celtic and Rangers," he explains. "On Romanian TV, you are as likely to see the goals from games here as goals from the Serbian and Turkish leagues. This is a tough championship but I think the mentality is better in the west than the east. They think better here even just as people.
"You watch on TV, the worst supporters are from the east. You hear of racism at Red Star and at Partizan the supporters beat their manager. It has happened in Turkey too. In Scotland, people are warm. You count as a person. People you don't know put an arm round you and chat and smile. I like to know new people, find new places with different cultures and different football. But I like good people and good cultures."
Niculae comes over as something of a softy, with features to match. Yet, the bustling 6ft 2in forward considers he has "strength and power necessarily" to succeed in the Scottish game because he has a black belt in judo. His family was well-to-do under the austere communist rule. Sport was important in fostering discipline and routine and his father, Constantine, just happened to be a European judo champion twice at the beginning of the 1980s. "Judo teaches you to respect opponents and how to look after your body; when to eat and when to rest," he says. "My father taught me that too as a quality sportsman of high performance."
His early years were framed by his judo experiences – even down to the monumental life-changing event for his country in 1989. "Because I was a child of eight under communism, I didn't feel too many things about the regime," Niculae states. "At that age, nothing scares you. But I do remember I was fighting in judo and I heard gunshots from outside the building I was in. I thought it was the army practising. It was the start of the revolution."
The backwards evolution in the professional existence of Niculae can be traced to his knee requiring to be rebuilt following a severe cruciate injury in his second season with Sporting. In his first, he netted ten goals in 24 appearances as a contemporary of Cristiano Ronaldo and Ricardo Quaresma in a side that captured league, cup and the super cup. Throughout his time in Lisbon, where he has kept a house, his body continued to rebel against him. He still has two pins in his right foot as a consequence of a metatarsal fracture.
"In four years with Sporting I had four big injuries," he says. "I didn't play in a championship from beginning to end. I played for six months, then was out for six months, back for six months and out for two months. It is very difficult mentally when you play some games, score some goals, then somebody kicks you and you have to watch the other players as you take a long time to recover."
Even in his latter seasons with Sporting, though, he did have moments when fitness and form gelled. "On our way to the UEFA final I scored against Newcastle, against Alan Shearer," he says with relish. "He got a goal when they beat us 1-0 in England but I put in our first when we beat them 4-1 in the next game."
Niculae is fluent in Portuguese, French and English from his travels. He has no bitterness over the fact he was largely forgotten after Mainz were relegated from the Bundesliga last season. "I didn't play too much in those eight months and some clubs were afraid to take me on because I wasn't in good shape," he says. "The big teams want players in good shape to enter the pitch immediately."
It wasn't the only problem he encountered in attempting to revive his career in Scotland. He admits his attractive remuneration package initially caused consternation among new team-mates who earn a fraction of his £5,000-a-week. "At the beginning a lot of players looked at me and said: 'Who is this guy?'" he says. "At every club in the world when somebody wins more money other players are suspicious, but now it is not a problem. Thank God, I won a lot of money at Sporting so now I don't have to put that in first place. I came to Inverness because in first place was my dream of getting back in the national team."
Originally, Niculae was refused a work permit for failing to meet the home office criteria regarding international appearances across the previous year. A petition signed by thousands of Inverness supporters helped swing an appeal. He has no grumbles about the fact that Romania's entry to the European Union has not accorded the country's citizens the same rights to free movement as previous new members. "Rules are rules and they were not Scottish rules," he says. "Maybe it is different for Romania and Bulgaria because they were afraid the same numbers would come here as came from Poland. There aren't many Romanians in Great Britain. There are the Cheeky Girls, but I give a better impression, no?"
