RRI Sports Club – A Romanian manager makes history in Italian football
Cristian Chivu is the first Romanian football manager to win one of Europe’s top championships.
Florin Orban, 06.05.2026, 13:45
With three matches remaining before the end of the Italian first division football championship, we already know the name of the winning team. Following Sunday’s 2-0 victory against Parma, Internazionale Milano secured its 21st title, and among those who contributed to this great achievement is a Romanian – manager Cristian Chivu. Having taken charge of the team only a year ago, the coach knew how to rebuild the players’ morale after losing the Champions League final to France’s PSG and missing out on the league title by a single point behind Napoli. This year, Inter dominated Serie A and, with three rounds left in the season, sits 12 points ahead of rivals Napoli, a lead that can no longer be overturned.
On Sunday, Chivu became the first Romanian manager to prevail in one of Europe’s top-flight championships. At the Milanese club, he previously won the league three times as a player. The Romanian has thus entered the history of the Milan club as the third man to win the championship as both a player and a manager. The first was Virgilio Fossati in the 1909–1910 season (serving as player-manager), followed by Armando Castellazzi, champion as a player in 1930 and as a manager in 1938.
Cristian Chivu was born on October 26, 1980. He started his professional playing career at the main team in his hometown, CSM Reșița, in 1996, staying there until 1998 when he moved to Universitatea Craiova. In 1999, he was transferred to the famous Dutch club Ajax Amsterdam. In 2003, he moved to the Italian club AS Roma for $21 million, a transfer that broke all Romanian football records at the time. In 2007, he moved to Internazionale Milano where, in 2014, he ended his playing career. Chivu’s debut for the Romanian national team took place in 1999. He played 75 matches for the first representative team and appeared in two European Championship final tournaments, in 2000 and 2008.
He began his coaching career in 2018 with the children and youth groups of Internazionale Milano. In July 2021, he was appointed manager of Inter Milan Primavera, with whom he became the youth champion of Italy in 2022. In February 2025, he took over the club’s senior team at Parma, saving them from relegation to Serie B. In June, he became the head coach of Inter. (VP)
