At Get’s Bet, Balint and Lacatus, the heroes of Sevilla, team up again
Bookmaker log
by George Radu
The story of Get’s Bet continues, and not anyway! It is getting an increasingly impressive aura. After Marius Lacatus, glory of Romanian football, joined the Get’s Bet project a few months ago, here comes another legend, a prominent member of the Golden Generation of Romanian football – Gavril Pele Balint!
The twins of goals, the brand ambassadors
Marius Lacatus and Gabi Balint will remain in the history of Romanian football as the “twins of goals” of the historic success in Seville, from May 7, 1986, when Steaua won the European Champions Cup in football. Lacatus and Balint are again colleagues, this time as ambassadors of the Get’s Bet brand. We are proud to have them with us, to be represented by the heroes of Seville, with whom our customers will have many surprises.
At the age of 57, Gabi Balint scored perhaps the most important goals in the most important moments for the sport-king from us: in the 1986 final in Seville, when Steaua won the European Champions Cup, the double against Denmark in 1989, which brought Romania back to a World Championship after 20 years, and in the gate of the world champion, Argentina, at Coppa del Mondo 1990, in the draw that would take us for the first time in the finals of a final tournament.
Pele – a name predestined to a high level footballer
Gabi Balint was really born with the ball at his feet. This is because his father, a former player and later coach of the local team from Sangeorz-Bai, wanted with all his heart to have a boy to play football. Therefore, January 3, 1963 was going to become the happiest day of the Balint family’s senior life since his son was born, to whom he has since drawn his football destiny, naming him Gavril Pele. Basically, it was almost impossible for someone named Pele not to play football at the highest level. In fact, Gabi made the first steps in football organized just under his father’s command, at the junior team of Hebe Sangeorz-Bai. His talent propelled him to Luceafarul Bucharest, the club that gathered the most valuable young footballers in the country and the place where the Golden Generation of Romanian football was formed. Gabi Balint was one of the members of the first generation from Luceafarul, arriving in the Capital in 1978, the year the club was founded.
He arrived at Steaua, at the age of 18
After a brief trip to Gloria Bistrita, the flag team of his county, Gabi moved to Steaua in 1981, when he was only 18 years old. He chose the group from Ghencea, pushed by his former trainer from Luceafarul, Costică Toma, but, above all, from his father’s desire to see him wearing his military uniform, especially since he had also made the army in Ghencea, with tankers.
Arriving in Ghencea in 1981, Gabi Balint has marked since his first year a unique performance in the history of Romanian football, the bronze medal at the World Junior Championships in Australia, in a team with Romulus Gabor, Mircea Rednic and Ioan Andone.
Gabi was to know full dedication to Steaua, with which he won five champion titles and three Romanian Cups, but especially the European Champions Cup (after scoring one of the goals of the victory against Barcelona, next to Lacatus, from the penalty kicks) and the European Super Cup.
In 1989, Gabi Balint would sign a double sensation against Denmark, in the decisive match for qualifying for the World Cup in Italy. Thanks to him, the “tricolors”, who won 3-1, have reached a World Championship for the first time in the last 20 years.
Unfortunately, At 30, he had to end his footballing career due to a meniscus injury. Gabi went beyond this moment by staying in the football field, working as a coach.
Although he had a rather short career as a footballer, the new Get’s Bet ambassador, Gavril Pele Balint, knew how to move forward with dignity and confidence, making his place in the gallery of honor of Romanian football.
