Cosmin Augustin Tilincă (born 1 August 1979) is a

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

n former footballer.

Club career

Tilincă was born on 1 August 1979 in

Turda Turda (; , ; ; ) is a Municipiu, city in Cluj County, Transylvania, Romania. It is located in the southeastern part of the county, from the county seat, Cluj-Napoca, to which it is connected by the European route E81, and from nearby Câmpia ...

, starting to play junior level football at local club, Arieșul. In 1997 he started to play for Arieșul's senior squad in Divizia C. In 2002 he went to play at Divizia B level, signing with CFR Cluj. In the 2003–04 season he scored three goals to help the team earn promotion to the first division, making a couple in the offence with Adrian Anca. In the following season he made his

Divizia A Liga I (; ''First League''), also spelled as Liga 1 and officially known as SuperLiga for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Romania and the highest level of the Romanian football league system. Contested by 1 ...

debut on 21 August 2004 when coach Aurel Șunda sent him on the field in the 65th minute in order to replace Sead Brunčević in CFR's 4–2 win over Apulum Alba Iulia. He scored his first goal on 11 June 2005 in a 2–1 home victory against FC Brașov. Under the guidance of coach Dorinel Munteanu he played ten games in the 2005 Intertoto Cup campaign as CFR got past Vėtra,

Athletic Bilbao Athletic Club (; ), commonly known as Athletic Bilbao (), or simply Athletic, is a professional Football club (association football), football club based in the city of Bilbao in the Southern Basque Country, Basque Country, Spain. They are known ...

Saint-Étienne Saint-Étienne (; Franco-Provençal: ''Sant-Etiève''), also written St. Etienne, is a city and the prefecture of the Loire département, in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regi ...

and Žalgiris, scoring seven goals against all these opponents, the team reaching the final where they were defeated 4–2 on aggregate by

Lens A lens is a transmissive optical device that focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements'') ...

.

With those seven goals scored, Tilincă was the top-scorer of the competition, also earning the nickname ''Tili-goal''. In February 2007 he signed with Farul Constanța who paid 40.000€ to CFR, being wanted there by coach Basarab Panduru. Until the end of the

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

, Tilincă made 11 league appearances for Farul, scoring once in a 1–1 draw with Steaua București. He then went at Gloria Bistrița for the 2007–08 season. Under the guidance of coach Ioan Sabău, he played five games in the 2007 Intertoto Cup campaign as Gloria eliminated Grbalj and Maccabi Haifa, scoring once against the latter, reaching the final where he netted once and provided the assist to Dorel Zaharia's goal in a 2–1 home victory against Atlético Madrid, however the second leg was lost with 1–0, thus losing the final on the

away goals rule The away goals rule is a method of tiebreaking in association football and other sports when teams play each other twice, once at each team's home ground. Under the away goals rule, if the total goals scored by each team are equal, the team that ...

. In 2008, he went at Pandurii Târgu Jiu where on 6 November 2009 he netted his last goal in the Romanian league in a 1–1 against his former side, Gloria Bistrița. He made his last first league appearance on 22 May 2010 in Pandurii's 1–0 away win over Unirea Alba Iulia, having a total of 135 matches with 23 goals netted in the competition. Afterwards, Tilincă returned to his hometown at Arieșul, playing for them in the Romanian lower leagues until 2015. He then went to play in the German lower leagues at Germania Okriftel, TSV Trebur and SKV Mörfelden. In 2018 he came back to Romania, signing with Sănătatea Cluj where he stayed until his retirement in 2023.

International career

In 2005, Tilincă was called up by coach Victor Pițurcă at Romania's national team, to play in friendlies against

Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest List of ci ...

and

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

. However due to an injury suffered in a training match with Sportul Studențesc București, he did not get to play in those games.

Honours

CFR Cluj * Divizia B: 2003–04 *

UEFA Intertoto Cup The UEFA Intertoto Cup (from , "between" and , " betting pool"),Most precisely, from ( football pool); cf. originally called the International Football Cup, was a summer football competition between European clubs. The competition was dis ...

runner-up:

2005 2005 was designated as the International Year for Sport and Physical Education and the International Year of Microcredit. The beginning of 2005 also marked the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Internationa ...

Gloria Bistrița *

runner-up:

2007 2007 was designated as the International Heliophysical Year and the International Polar Year. Events January * January 1 **Bulgaria and Romania 2007 enlargement of the European Union, join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the Eur ...

References

External links

*
Cosmin Tilincă
at Fupa {{DEFAULTSORT:Tilinca, Cosmin 1980 births Living people Romanian men's footballers Men's association football forwards Liga I players Liga II players Liga III players ACS Sticla Arieșul Turda players CFR Cluj players FCV Farul Constanța players ACF Gloria Bistrița players CS Pandurii Târgu Jiu players Romanian expatriate men's footballers Romanian expatriate sportspeople in Germany Expatriate men's footballers in Germany Sportspeople from Turda Footballers from Cluj County 21st-century Romanian sportsmen