“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what FCSB can pretend not to have heard.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at FCSB can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
11 goals in 38 games at Frosinone — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at FCSB updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FCSB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Octavian Popescu has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at FCSB is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
“For the first time in years I am picked because somebody wants me in the team.” Voluntari suits him; the awkward conversation belongs to FCSB, and the summer will force it.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. David Popa did not need any: 9.30, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around CSM Reșița they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Marius Cioiu and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Words at CSM Reșița training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cristian Sima 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.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” FCSB have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
“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 FCSB know it.
Eddy Gnahoré 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.
Nobody at FCSB will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. CSM Reșița will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSM Reșița this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; CSM Reșița are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Words at CSM Reșița training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cristian Sima 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.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Paul Chiriches to a room that had heard them before.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 40 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
David Popa, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.04
A mark of 8.04 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around CSM Reșița they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSM Reșița this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: David Popa. 2‑1 against Ceahlăul Piatra Neamț, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with FC Argeș the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that FCSB will enjoy reviewing.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at FCSB, and it is not being withdrawn.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and FCSB have had the benefit of it.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.99 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Marked 7.99. There is a kind of forward whose value only shows up when you count what he was involved in rather than what he finished, and this is the day that argument makes itself.
FCSB asked and Corinthians said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” FCSB have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FCSB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say David Miculescu is on it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Oțelul Galați in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
They sit in position 14 and they will be waiting. Away form is where a season shows its true character, and this side has a point to make about its own.
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Ofri Arad has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
The 85th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Darius Olaru decided nobody was going anywhere. CFR Cluj had no time left to answer.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Darius Olaru. 2‑1 against CFR Cluj, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Nothing about the week ahead is ordinary. Dinamo Bucharest on Saturday, a town that has already started talking about it, and a dressing room that does not need telling what it means.
6 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Mihai Nedelcearu kept it short after the 2‑1 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. João Paulo scored, was marked 7.80, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Successful dribbles: 17. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FCSB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Mihai Nedelcearu chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Two goals and a mark of 9.23 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
At 33 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.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.74 for the rest of it.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at FCSB can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. UTA Arad tried to reorganise, FCSB did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
Two goals and a mark of 8.98 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FCSB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Mihai Nedelcearu, on a 2‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.