For the first time in many days Romanian newspapers turn their eyes from the Danube flood crisis in the south of the country. Instead they focus on tonight’s match between Steaua Bucharest and Middlesbrough in the second leg of the UEFA Cup semifinals, on the death of a former minister and on the effects of the ex-Communist regime in 2006.

And one newspaper reports a Hungarian Popular MEPs intervention at the EC for not considering the situation of Hungarians in Romania when it analyzes the country’s preparation to join the EU.

After their 1-0 victory on home turf last week, Steaua will face Middlesbrough in the second leg of the UEFA Cup semifinals on English soil tonight. And it will do so not only for themselves, but for millions of Romanians as the match is the most important for Romanian club football in the last 15 years, Evenimentul Zilei writes.

And a victory – to be followed by the UEFA Cup finals in Eindhoven next month – would be a supreme joy for a whole generation of Steaua fans, after Sevilla ’86 when the Romanian team defeated Barcelona in a historical match.

But the interest of the English media in the match tonight is not matching the Romanian hype at all as not one British reporter showed at Teeside Airport for the arrival of the Romanian team, according to Adevarul.

Not that it would matter, as the team led by coach Cosmin Olaroiu chose a low profile training session yesterday evening, more interested in strengthening their motivation than in playing certain schemes and revealing them to the rivals, as Sport Total reports.

Meanwhile, Gandul writes that Middlesbrough fans are preparing a choreography similar to that of Steaua for tonight. The newspaper quotes a veteran fan of the English team who says he and his mates plan to use the method to intimidate Romanians as they were felt intimidated on the first leg in Bucharest.

But not all is joyous and optimistic in Romanian media today. Evenimentul Zilei reports the death of former Reform minister Ulm Spineanu yesterday.

Spineanu, who served in a rightist government in the late nineties, died of a heart attack while he was summoned at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Romanian Police to answer questions in a case related to economic irregularities late last decade.

According to Evenimentul Zilei, he died as he was carried in a police car to an Emergency Hospital in the Romanian capital after waiting an hour for an ambulance. The police requested the Bucharest Tribunal prosecutors to check the circumstances in which Spineanu died.

The same newspaper publishes a list of 100 officials who should come under the incidence of a future lustration law, banning former Communist officials from holding office in today’s Romania.

The list, headed by two Social Democratic (PSD, opposition) ex-ministers/current parliamentarians and a member of the Conservative Party, was produced by studying the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party, the Communist Youth Union and other such organizations of old.

And it proves that 16 years after the fall of the Romanian communist regime, the effects of a lustration law will not be irrelevant at all, Evenimentul Zilei writes.

The economic weekly Capital, meanwhile, focuses on the value of buildings and parcels of land with an unsolved judicial situation in Bucharest, a value which goes well into the billions of euro. Almost all of them are fought over in an effort by former owners to recover their properties confiscated by the Communist regime before 1989.

And this unchecked real estate treasure includes no less than a thousand hectares of land in the Romanian capital, the weekly writes.

Back to today’s news, Adevarul reports that a group of 15 Hungarian MEPs, almost all part of the European Popular Party, have submitted a letter to the European Commission sanctioning European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn for not considering the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania as the European executive analyzes the country’s efforts to join the Union next year.

One MEP, Gyorgy Schopflin, even accuses Rehn in an interview for EUObserver.com of trying to hide the issue under the carpet.

And Gandul gets ready for the summer season by quoting a US study on the cheapest tourism destinations in the world. The guide now includes Romania, along Argentina and Nicaragua, as a country where tourists can easily find accommodation for 20 dollars a day, or meals for two dollars.