Barca Warns Romanian Side …Over Crest Identity

Romanian side Otelul Galati are to hastily re-design their club crest after eagle-eyed officials at Barcelona noticed it resembled theirs a little too closely and threatened legal action.

Galati played in the Champions League as recently as the 2011-12 season but fell upon hard times and now ply their trade in Romania’s second division.

And perhaps in an attempt to rediscover the lost magic, they designed a new badge last year to mark their 50th anniversary.

However, the Romanians made the error of copying the exact shape of Barca’s world famous crest and after wearing it for nearly two years, they are now back to the drawing board.

The European champions, being a touch pedantic, sent Otelul a legal notice because the shape is identical.

Otelul sporting director Cristian Munteanu said: ‘Barcelona are right. The club logo is identical to that of Barcelona. It was a mistake, a copy-paste, so we will change the logo.'

‘I wanted to change it anyway as supporters were not happy with the new logo. We will return to our old logo which we played with in the Champions League and won the championship and Super Cup.'

‘We are obliged to Barcelona [to change it] because we received notice from Barcelona. Someone from Barcelona saw the logo and they sent us a notice.’

Otelul, based in the Danube port city of Galati in the east of Romania, won their first league championship in 2011 and made the Champions League for the first time.