Florentina Olar-Spânu

Football started with stones for goalposts. As a child in Constanța, Florentina played in front of her apartment block, in the schoolyard and on the beach, often using stones or sand piles to create goals.

She was the football-mad sister. While her sister preferred dolls, Florentina remembers being the more tomboyish child, playing with toy cars and spending her free time around football.

Before choosing football, she also tried athletics, gymnastics and karate. She spent two years in athletics and even combined it with football for a period before deciding she would rather run after a ball.

At 16, she left home to chase a title. After helping her team in Constanța finish second, she wanted to join champions CFF Clujana and eventually persuaded her mother to let her move to another city.

She used to walk for more than an hour to training—and then the same distance home. That meant roughly two hours of travel on foot for a 90-minute training session.

She became a mother while continuing an elite football career. During her first son's infancy, she travelled to national-team camps with him, with help from her mother, mother-in-law and support staff around the Romanian team.

Florentina has two kids. Family was a major factor in one of her biggest career decisions. When she received offers from elsewhere in 2016, she chose to remain at Fortuna Hjørring because she felt it was the best long-term decision for her family.

Florentina Olar became the first player in Romanian football—women's or men's—to reach 200 appearances for the senior national team, and she announced her retirement from international football in 2025.