David Lazar and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christ Afalna was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Hermannstadt told Kalifa Kujabi something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
CFR Cluj next, and one man in the Hermannstadt dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Andrei Borza signs something — a contract at Hermannstadt or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
A side in position 2 visits next. The result will not make anybody’s season and it could quietly break the shape of one, which is why the manager has been watching the video since Sunday.
Up for the corner, and Jacob Aboosah delivers — 7.90
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Jacob Aboosah scored, was marked 7.90, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Kilian Ludewig was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lorenzo Biliboc is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jacob Aboosah. 1‑0 against Gloria Bistrița, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Răzvan Călugăr is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager’s verdict
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Tome Kitanovski
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Câmpulung Muscel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lorenzo Biliboc was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Câmpulung Muscel can tell you which week it ends in.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Câmpulung Muscel know it.
17 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.