At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.33 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Graham Ankamafio 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.
Squad23 Aug 2038
Luca Regiardo falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
It finished 3‑2, and it was Graham Ankamafio’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to CFR Cluj.
Player ratings23 Aug 2038
Marko Mitrovic was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.93. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Marked 8.08 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
At 39 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.67 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Graham Ankamafio 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.
Squad26 Jul 2038
Luca Regiardo falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Marked 8.13 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CFR Cluj will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad28 Jun 2038
Words at CFR Cluj training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marco Speelman 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.
Ionut Iancu 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.
113 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CFR Cluj lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The club looked outside for a month, found nothing it preferred, and handed the job to the man who had been doing it anyway. He knows the building; now he has to prove he knows the rest.
Graham Ankamafio 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.
18 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CFR Cluj lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 17 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad7 Sep 2037
Vlad Dragomir falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Marked 8.96 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CFR Cluj will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.38 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Graham Ankamafio 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.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 7 goals between CFR Cluj and Astra, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Squad10 Aug 2037
Luca Regiardo falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Shots: 5. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon Marco Speelman will want back
19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CFR Cluj lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CFR Cluj will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
49 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CFR Cluj lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 107 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Graham Ankamafio 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Claudiu Mihaila has just signed for CFR Cluj, and for once the answer mattered.
FCSB will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Ramiro Martínez has pre-agreed a move to CFR Cluj, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CFR Cluj can pretend not to have heard.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Andrei Cordea commits to CFR Cluj for another 2 years.
Squad5 Jan 2037
Karlo Muhar falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.