“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Petrolul know it.
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.
14 combined actions and 6.76. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Domen Cerin. 1‑0 against FCSB, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Sergiu Iancu 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.
13 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Adrian Maxim 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.
10 goals in one match, Ciprian Ratiu on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Petrolul and Pandurii.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Domen Cerin 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.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
“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 The request is on a desk at Petrolul, and it is not being withdrawn.
Ciprian 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Tomás Bugallo and Petrolul agree another 4 years.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Words at Petrolul training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Domen Cerin 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 manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Adrian Maxim has his answer from Petrolul; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Petrolul can pretend not to have heard.
The name of Andrei Mitrita has come up in conversations Petrolul were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Adrian Maxim 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.
He is going to Universitatea Craiova, the club has $2.7M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Universitatea Craiova paid $2.7M and Petrolul took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
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.
The terraces21 Jun 2027
Petrolul spend $7.4M on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $7.4M for Domen Cerin, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Andrei Hagi was one of the reasons people came, and $3.0M does not replace that by itself.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Pandurii moved on, Vlad Maxim reports back to Petrolul, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Alexandre Picard is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
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.
The phone has started ringing about Daniel Stanciu again, and this time the name on the line is Podbrezova. Petrolul are listening politely and promising nothing.
87 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Petrolul lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Position 3, 26 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.
Daniel Coman 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.
In brief
SquadCosmin Moldovan falls out with a teammate over standards
The words a physio says slowly. 146 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.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Adrian Maxim: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
11 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere 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 Petrolul this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Petrolul lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The offer from Partizan for Cosmin Moldovan was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Petrolul will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Add another name to the list: Lechia have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Andrei Mitrita. The answer from Petrolul has not changed — yet.
0‑0 against Valur, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
Position 3, 26 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Petrolul have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Andrei Hagi 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.
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Javi Zarzo 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.
In brief
SquadThe team sheet said everything about Daniel Coman
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 19 combined actions and a mark of 6.83, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Cosmin Moldovan 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.
6 goals in one match, Javi Zarzo on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Petrolul and Dinamo Bucharest.
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.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
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.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 12 combined actions and a mark of 7.57, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Andrei Hagi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.30. 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Petrolul training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guillermo Bassi 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 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.