The words a physio says slowly. 114 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.
Adrian Ratiu 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jésah Ayessa 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Astra know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Astra would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Astra. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Position 3, 19 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Mihai Bordeianu 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.
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.
Pandurii next, and the two sides the division is watching meet each other. Whoever wins will be told nothing is decided in the same breath as being congratulated.
David Barbu, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.22
A mark of 8.22 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.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.86 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Botosani training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hervin Ongenda 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.
8.14. 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.
The dugout14 Sep 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.” Ciprian Hagi kept it short after the 3‑1 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Botosani waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Astra is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Market31 Aug 2026
Riad Šuta arrives at Astra in a $430.0K statement of intent
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Astra have paid $430.0K for Riad Šuta, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $400.0K — a club that wants Ionuţ Cercel enough to be asked twice.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Las Palmas keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Marked 10.00 — 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.
Two goals and a mark of 9.10 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Botosani have done the hard part with Astra, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Flamengo keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.