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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Petrolul training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Carlos Riascos 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 general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Petrolul training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrei Balasa 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.
“I did not go to Universitatea Craiova to sit and watch. I want to come back to Petrolul and fight for my place.” 5 appearances in 15 matches say the rest.
The words a physio says slowly. 28 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.
“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.
“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 Petrolul hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Lucho Vega 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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at Petrolul training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrei Balasa 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.
“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 Petrolul, and 5 appearances in 11 say he has earned the hearing.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 46 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
7 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.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Universitatea Craiova may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
5 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Universitatea Craiova can tell you which week it ends in.
Oleksandr Romanchuk 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.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Pandurii defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
9 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Universitatea Craiova will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The offer from Shonan Bellmare for Assad Al Hamlawi 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.
Oleksandr Romanchuk 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
In brief
The terracesSupporters make their feelings known about Răzvan Sava
Ianis Deac 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.