American football beginnings in Romania were rather unconventional: in 2007, a group of friends started chatting on an online forum about football and soon after they decided to meet in person in a park and start playing football.

The Bucharest Rebels were founded in 2012 by the core of that same group. They started playing immediately, benefiting from the experience of the players involved, veterans of other Romanian teams and from the good infrastructure team had an access to.

Since 2012 the Rebels played in all domestic championship editions, managing to win four national titles: 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2019.

During this time span, the focus shifted to international games too since Romanian League offers only a small number of games and growth can be achieved only by playing, as much as it is possible.

So next to a bunch of friendlies (Dubai Falcons, Bydgoszcz Archers, Sofia Bears) the Rebels played in the Atlantic Cup in 2017 and 2018 alongside teams from Ireland, France and Holland, as well as the 2019 CEFL Cup, losing 28-14 to the Belgrade SBB Vukovi.

The Rebels philosophy was always “to do things differently”. When all the other teams in Romania were practicing and playing on grass, the team decided to play on turf. When everybody was using an under center, running a heavy offense, Rebels employed a spread offense from the gun.

Also, the Rebels were the first team in Romania to bring in imports to further solidify their philosophy, basically pioneering this movement that soon started being adopted by other teams, bringing more quality to the duels.

For the 2020, Rebels plan to defend their National Championship Title, relying on a plethora of good quality imports, as well as to play their best possible game in the Balkan Football League, benefiting from the coaching experience of those imports and from the exuberance of their young Romanian players.