Marked for Carlo Scalise
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match26 Sep 2026
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Carlo Scalise will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Pandurii escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
A brace, and Carlo Scalise takes the afternoon — 8.98
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Carlo Scalise provided it, and the 8.98 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Market28 Sep 2026
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Carlo Scalise wants continental football; whether Pandurii can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Alexandru Bancu 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
“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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Pandurii training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Júnior Freitas 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.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
A performance of 8.09 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Match26 Sep 2026
It finished 3‑3, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad28 Sep 2026
A defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad14 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pandurii this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match12 Sep 2026
Astra made Pandurii work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Florin Maxim was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.41. 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Pandurii training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Júnior Freitas 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Sergiu Hagi gets it from the manager
“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.
Loan watch14 Sep 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Pandurii, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Fernando Cordero dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
14 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad17 Aug 2026
Pedro Pinho 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Daniel Bancu
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Pandurii training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Júnior Freitas 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
A smaller club would suit Carlo Scalise now
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Pandurii can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
Match15 Aug 2026
Point won or two lost for Pandurii?
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Voluntari? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Market17 Aug 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Andrei Mitrita has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Pandurii.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
12 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Marked 5.59, and generously at that. Nothing came off, and by the end the crowd had stopped expecting it to.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market10 Aug 2026
Fenerbahce come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Pandurii did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
The terraces10 Aug 2026
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 6 of the 27 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Market10 Aug 2026
Daniel Bancu wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Pandurii hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Carlo Scalise commits to Pandurii for another 4 years.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Daniel Bancu 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 Pandurii this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match8 Aug 2026
1‑2 to Universitatea Craiova, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad10 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Carlo Scalise
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market10 Aug 2026
Add another name to the list: Botosani have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Ciprian Keseru. The answer from Pandurii has not changed — yet.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at Pandurii training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Júnior Freitas 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad3 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market3 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Pandurii did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market3 Aug 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Pandurii heard it as anything else.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Daniel Bancu 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Sergiu Deac and Pandurii agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
The terraces3 Aug 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Dorin Iancu has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
A performance of 8.39 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Júnior Freitas 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.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Ninety minutes of Dorin Iancu at his very best
Marked 8.05. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Pandurii.