“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Mihai Cicaldau and Pandurii agree another 3 years.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Bogdan Burca 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.
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Squad5 Jul 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Pedro Pinho's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.
In brief
SquadOvidiu Nita has become a man the manager trusts
The words a physio says slowly. 29 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.
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
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.
18 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad31 May 2027
Words at Pandurii training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Peñaloza 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 loan was meant to give him football. 0 games and 0 goals later he is back at Pandurii no further forward, and everybody involved will explain why it was not their doing.
The words a physio says slowly. 59 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.
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.
In brief
SquadWords at Pandurii training over how hard people work
82 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Pandurii lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Claudiu Keseru 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.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Words at Pandurii training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bogdan Burca 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 words a physio says slowly. 106 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.
Maxime Spano 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.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Bogdan Burca 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.
Bogdan Burca 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.
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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Arnas Voitinovičius is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Bram van Driel has just signed for Pandurii, and for once the answer mattered.
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.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Pandurii training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bogdan Burca 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.