# Florea Ispir

Florea Ispir (born 25 November 1949 in Vârteju, Ilfov County) is a Romanian football player and coach. As a player, his total of 485 appearances in Liga I for ASA Târgu Mureș place him third in the all-time list, behind Ionel Dănciulescu with 515 and Costică Ștefănescu with 490, also those 485 appearances place him first in the Liga I matches played for a single team.

## Playing career

Florea Ispir was born on 25 November 1949 in Vârteju, Romania, growing up as a fan of Rapid București, as he was impressed by players Dan Coe and Ion Motroc, at one point he went at a trial to play for them but was not offered a contract. He played junior level football in the early 1960s at Steaua București where he worked with coach Nicolae Tătaru. He started his senior career when Steaua sent him to play in the 1969–70 Divizia C season at TUG București. Afterwards he had an offer to play for ASA Târgu Mureș, which he accepted as he thought that it would be hard for him to earn a starting position in the central defense of Steaua in front of internationals Dumitru Nicolae and Bujor Hălmăgeanu. He made his Divizia A debut for ASA on 29 March 1970 under coach Tiberiu Bone in a 2–1 away loss in front of Universitatea Craiova, by the end of the season the team relegating to Divizia B, but Ispir stayed with the club, helping it promote back to the first league after one year. Ispir spent the rest of his career at ASA which consisted of a total of 19 seasons, playing alongside players like László Bölöni, Nicolae Nagy, Árpád Fazekas, Iuliu Hajnal or Petre Varodi, making 485 Divizia A appearances with two goals scored, receiving only one red card in his entire career in a match against Rapid. The highlights of this period were a second place in the 1974–75 Divizia A season, reaching the 1973 Balkans Cup final and playing in all the 6 UEFA Cup matches from the three consecutive seasons the team participated in it. Around 1975 or 1976 he had offers to play for UTA Arad and CSM Reșița but he refused to go there even if he could have earned more money because he was attached to the town and loved by the fans who called him Shake-Ispir, a nickname inspired from Shakespeare. After the team relegated once more in 1986, he helped it promote again after one year, than played four more Divizia A matches, the last one being a 2–1 away loss in front of Dinamo București which took place on 4 October 1987. He had an offer from the team's new coach, Cornel Dinu to play in the final minutes of the games so he can reach 500 Divizia A appearances but Ispir declined it, because he was 38 years old and had a hard time recovering after suffering a nasty injury in a match against Victoria București, also claiming that by playing only in the final minutes of the games he would have made a fool out of himself and tricked football. Even do he played for Romania under-18 and Romania B, Florea Ispir never played for Romania's senior team and on 13 May 2020, Gazeta Sporturilor included him on a list of best Romanian players who never played for the senior national team.

## Managerial career

Florea Ispir started coaching shortly after ending his career when he was an assistant of Cornel Dinu at ASA Târgu Mureș. From 1992 until 2001 Ispir worked as a head coach at ASA Târgu Mureș, Gaz Metan Mediaș, Apulum Alba Iulia, Chimica Târnăveni and Gaz Metan Târgu Mureș, claiming that he liked coaching but he made the mistake of not adapting to the newer mentality of the players, talking to them as when he was a player.

## Honours
### Player

ASA Târgu Mureș
* Divizia A runner-up: 1974–75
* Divizia B: 1970–71, 1986–87
* Balkans Cup runner-up: 1973