Marked for Mario Din Licaciu
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad11 Dec 2028
Antonio Borduşanu damages knee ligaments — 28 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 28 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad11 Dec 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 19 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad11 Dec 2028
Alberto Soro and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad11 Dec 2028
Words at Dinamo Bucharest training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Arthur Gomes 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.
The dugout11 Dec 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Andrei Mărginean, and the manager let it.
The dugout11 Dec 2028
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.
Market11 Dec 2028
The Alberto Soro story refuses to die
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Alberto Soro signs something — a contract at Dinamo Bucharest or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The dugout11 Dec 2028
Vlad Dragomir knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Vlad Dragomir trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The dugout11 Dec 2028
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Dinamo Bucharest. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad4 Dec 2028
5 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Match28 Nov 2028
10‑0. Nights like this are why clubs spend decades trying to qualify for this competition, and they arrive perhaps twice in that time. Everybody who was in the ground will describe it badly for years.
Squad4 Dec 2028
Erik Kojzek takes the match ball home
3 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Squad4 Dec 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 26 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market4 Dec 2028
Huachipato come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Dinamo Bucharest did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad4 Dec 2028
Alberto Soro 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.
Match28 Nov 2028
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 7 matches without defeat is a foundation Dinamo Bucharest did not have in the autumn.
Player ratings4 Dec 2028
Ninety minutes of Mamoudou Karamoko at his very best
Marked 10.00. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Dinamo Bucharest.
Player ratings4 Dec 2028
A performance of 9.92 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match19 Aug 2028
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 4‑0 against Botosani, and it could have been more.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Two goals and a mark of 9.56 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Market21 Aug 2028
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Dinamo Bucharest have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Transfer targets21 Aug 2028
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Bolton Wanderers have kept their man, and Dinamo Bucharest go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad21 Aug 2028
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Alberto Soro in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dinamo Bucharest this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match19 Aug 2028
10 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Squad21 Aug 2028
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Arthur Gomes beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 21. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.