Marked for Teun Bosch
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
Pressure builds in the Petrolul boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
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.
Market5 Feb 2029
“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 The request is on a desk at Petrolul, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad5 Feb 2029
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad5 Feb 2029
Yury Lodygin 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.
Squad5 Feb 2029
The medical room confirms 29 days on the sidelines for Florin Marin, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Squad5 Feb 2029
“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.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
$2.5M taken back off the Petrolul table
What was available in the summer has quietly gone. Upstairs nobody will call it a change of ambition; downstairs nobody will call it anything else.
Market5 Feb 2029
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Teun Bosch may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad11 Sep 2028
Florin Ştefan 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.
Player ratings11 Sep 2028
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match9 Sep 2028
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad11 Sep 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Ciprian Keseru, and the manager let it.
Squad11 Sep 2028
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Petrolul will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
Player ratings11 Sep 2028
Shots: 6. 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom6 Mar 2028
The scrutiny sharpens at Petrolul
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Petrolul is running low.
Squad6 Mar 2028
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Alexandru Balasa and Petrolul agree another 4 years.
Squad6 Mar 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Petrolul this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad6 Mar 2028
“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.
Market6 Mar 2028
The Mihai Ratiu talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Petrolul know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Squad6 Mar 2028
A wage question at Petrolul
Ibrahim Tanko has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.