Vlad I. Roșca

Economist, Ph.D., freelance journalist and independent researcher

When the Appetite for Entertainment Scores Goals

Romania is attacking on the left side of the pitch, Răzvan Marin and Florin Tănase have a short exchange of passes in the corner of the penalty box, which opens some wide spaces for the latter to penetrate and make a decisive pass for Eric Bicfalvi, who, at 32, scores his first goal for the representative team of Romania, at his eighth cap. It was the 81st minute of the UEFA Nations League match on Windsor Park in Belfast. Around the same time that Răzvan, Florin and Eric had their passing game combinations, allowing the latter to find the back of the net, Sorin, Florin and Cătălin were finding the back of the plate. They were, obviously, not on any football pitch, but they were starring, as chefs and judges, in a well-known cooking show in Romania. More

Football-ism – The Ultimate Global Ideology

Savian Boroancă, Vlad I. Roșca

People(s) worshiping different deities and subject to different kinds of democracies, people(s) coming from older cultures or younger countries, all feel at home in the stands of stadiums or in the TV-oriented armchairs during football World Cups. Savian was yards away from Russian playgrounds and Vlad was inches away from HD screens. They play a friendly match in TMFI. More

In Pursuit of the West

Vlad I. Roșca

There is a ceaseless notion going on about the rearwardness of Eastern European states and their inability to build lastingness. Ideas uninterruptedly flow about a retrograde existence that keeps the East away from competing with the West; that the hiatus seems to enlarge day after day. Alignment with the West is one of the biggest endeavours of the East. Many efforts are put into an attempt of modernization which gives the impression of being beyond comprehension and realization. Arraying in the same clothes as the big brother looks to have become a mantra of the East, with an ubiquitous hope of a finest hour that will come when differences will no longer exist. Odd enough, the East sets its hopes in an ideal it has never managed to obtain for centuries, but which is now seen as an end goal. More

Smith, Hayek and the Virus: Entrepreneurial Responses in Times of Crisis

Vlad I. Roșca

The world is struggling with despair in the face of an uncaring threat at the moment of writing these ideas: that word is not even worth mentioning any longer, since it is probably on the lips (and in the ears) of the majority of people worldwide. ‘Probably’ and ‘majority’ are only used here in order to respect a certain journalistic demeanor in writing which requires some precautionary – thus, not categorical – statements. Indeed, some children might not truly understand what goes on during the present time; so might some minority of people living in any given disconnected and remote settlement (if such disconnection still exists) and, unfortunately, so does some whimsical category of people – even grown-ups – who, although they have heard about the danger, behave as if they do not understand what is happening (which, again, with precautionary measures, might just be the case: their ignorant behavior simply denotes a lack – inability? – of understanding). Or, the more despicable, they did understand, but they simply want to make a spectacle of their ability to break the law (because, hey, isn’t it so, they are ‘smarter’, ‘wiser’, ‘brighter’). More

Drifting Away

Vlad I. Roșca

Summers in Germany are usually temperate. The humid winds from the West and from the North keep temperatures at a decent average, letting people enjoy sunny, but not torrid days, while also safeguarding some vital sales of the traditional beer. Away from the proverbial workaholism, Germans can also find their ways for letting off steam. Some of them do it in the ‘Biergartens’ of the ‘Vaterland’, while most of the others jump on the plane to Mallorca to work on a tan which is unavailable back home. “Little Germany”, as Mallorca has come to be known, offers cheese cubes, roast pork (to put it ‘simply’: “Schweinebraten”) or apple salads next to traditional paellas in what has become a ‘saxon-iberic’ mix meant at attracting tourists. More

Kurt Lewin’s 3-Phase Change Model in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Vlad I. Roșca

Throughout 2020, the question of how the world would look like after the Coronavirus pandemic has been constantly repeated. The “status quo” has been challenged: our usual lives have been suddenly torn apart and life during Covid-19 has been described as “another normal” or as a “new normal”. Such a massive, transformational change is not commonplace, so the attempts of humanity to regain its balance are understandable. The Covid-19 pandemic ends up being a real case scenario for Kurt Lewin’s famous 3-phase change model, meant as a tool to resolve major social conflicts. More

The Psychological Watchdog of Footballers

Vlad I. Roșca

Where is Romanian football heading towards? Well, for a beginning, literally speaking, it might head towards the back of the net, which would be wonderful piece of news for the goal scoring team. The not so bright answer would come if the question was considered as a metaphor, not as a real ball-playing skill of any given footballer. Irrespective of where a ball is really heading – in or outside the goal, in the stands, outside the stadium even, as witnessed in many small, murky stadiums of lower league competitions – one thing is certain: Romanian football fans don’t really seem to be heading towards there where one would expect them to see: to the stadiums. More

The Market Liberalization of Space Odysseys

Vlad I. Roșca

Towards the end of 2019, a software issue during launch meant that Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was unable to perform its first mission to supply the International Space Station as intended. It might by counted as merely one of the many problems often faced in cosmic exploration, yet this one was of particular interest because the spacecraft was created and operated by Boeing, a private business, as opposed to a public body such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), such as we have been widely acquainted to. In fact, NASA abandoned the manned spacecraft program in 2011 (the space shuttle fleet), due to the high maintenance costs, as well as the significant and politically unpalatable dangers. Instead, what it has done since then has been to rent berths in Russian Soyuz spacecrafts or to encourage private businesses to come up with replacements. That is how SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corporation and United Launch Alliance jumped onto the bandwagon of a game that, for the better part of the last century, was played by governments moved by Cold War logic. More

Food Wars

Vlad I. Roșca

‘May the force be with you’, and it’s not Anakin Skywalker who possesses it, but it looks like you’d rather find it in old grandma’s cooking book. Dishes seem to have historically had the power not only to feed hungry stomachs and greedy souls, but also to beget monstrous diplomatic disharmonies. Not that it necessarily came to weapon-like conflicts, but still enough on the plate to leaven in a sourdough of cultural schisms. More

Starting Up on the Island of Love

Vlad I. Roșca

Victor Kislyi would for sure have been delighted with current market conditions in Cyprus, but even so, the strong-minded, iron-forged Belorussian young entrepreneur was never short of success. In August 1998 he deployed his units in Nicosia, joined them with home-based brainiacs from Minsk and started a quest to conquer the world with turn-based and real-time strategy warship games. Crown of the jewelry: the 2010 launched World of Tanks. A five-man startup in 1998, Wargaming turned into a four thousand plus employee business with over six million euros in net income. Reason enough for Cypriot authorities to reconsider their stance upon doing international business on the island of love. More

A Colchoneric Tragedy

Vlad I. Roșca

Santiago Roncagliolo did not do anything out of the usual. A young Peruvian writer, playwright, producer and journalist – a man of arts and letter, in a nutshell – emigrated to Spain at the turn of the century in search for a better life, in search of a career that he seemed to have been banned from in native Lima. This is the sort of brain-drain you get all over the world, sourced mainly underdeveloped countries. Santiago was only 27 when he settled in Madrid, aspiring to follow in the footsteps of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, the ‘corps d’elite’ of Latin American erudite triumph on European soil. Full of ardor, he descended to Barajas ready to mesmerize with pen on paper. More

An Entity without Identity:
The Collapse of Football Fandom in Romania

Vlad I. Roșca

Can it really go deeper than that? Officially, 218 people have watched the Liga 1 (Romanian National football league) game between FC Steaua Bucharest and ASU Poli Timișoara at the largest venue of the country – Arena Națională (with an all-seated capacity of 55634). That accounts for less than 0.4% of tickets sold. Say 300 people by adding to the headcount the stewards, police forces and the guests who did not have to buy a ticket. And this still comes no more than a couple of weeks after the same home side, at the same arena, gathered around 500 football lovers for the match against Pandurii Tg. Jiu, a visiting side that also had some of its own ‘records’: 34 in attendance against FC Voluntari, 50 against FC Botoșani, 200 against Astra Giurgiu (the reigning champions) at a stadium of 20054 seats. More