Marked for Bogdan Deac
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match15 Sep 2027
Out, 1‑3 to Olympique de Marseille, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Match20 Sep 2027
Position 11, 5 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Match18 Sep 2027
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.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Max Thompson is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 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.
Market20 Sep 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bourg-Peronnas is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Nathan Vitré 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.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Andy Pembélé has improved at 27, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Rayan Souici 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.
Match18 Sep 2027
AS Nancy left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match30 Aug 2027
Astra are in among the leaders
Position 3 and 11 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 29. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad30 Aug 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Andrei Moldovan commits to Astra for another 5 years.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Tempers go at Astra
Andrei 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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Words at Astra training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Claudiu Nedelcearu 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
Crisis
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 39. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Boardroom30 Aug 2027
The silence upstairs is getting loud at Bourg-Peronnas
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Alessio Martinez is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Max Thompson 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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Words at Bourg-Peronnas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rayan Souici 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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Match28 Aug 2027
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against AC Ajaccio? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Market30 Aug 2027
The best deals are the ones the accountants never notice. Alessio Martinez arrives at Bourg-Peronnas with his wages the only cost and something to prove the only clause.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Jul 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Nicolás Carreño
34 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Astra lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market12 Jul 2027
The unthinkable, invoiced: Cosmin Moldovan sold
Viitorul arrived with $240.0K and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
Match12 Jul 2027
Every point is an argument now for Astra
Position 9 and 10 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Market12 Jul 2027
The bid was some way short and Astra did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
The terraces12 Jul 2027
Supporters turn on the $240.0K sale of Cosmin Moldovan
He is going to Viitorul, the club has $240.0K 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.
Squad12 Jul 2027
João Simões: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Astra have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
In brief
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Squad
Tempers go at Astra
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Squad
Words at Astra training over how hard people work
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Jun 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Nicolás Carreño
59 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Astra lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market21 Jun 2027
The name of Cosmin Moldovan has come up in conversations Astra were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad21 Jun 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Dorin Bancu is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad29 Mar 2027
Claudiu Mihaila damages knee ligaments — 98 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 98 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.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Words at Astra training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrei Stanciu 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.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Nicusor Deac 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 Astra this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Feb 2027
Tempers go at Astra
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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Words at Astra training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Florin Moldovan 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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
One of our own is behind an import at Astra
He is 27, he has been here since he was a boy, and the shirt he grew up expecting has been given to somebody flown in for it. That grievance belongs to the town as much as to the player.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market21 Dec 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Astra can pretend not to have heard.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Astra training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrei Stanciu 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.
Squad21 Dec 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 Astra this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad14 Dec 2026
Tempers go at Astra
Claudiu Nedelcearu 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.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Florin Moldovan 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.
Squad14 Dec 2026
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 38. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match12 Sep 2026
No end in sight to Astra's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Astra has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad14 Sep 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Astra training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrei Stanciu 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.
Match12 Sep 2026
A bad afternoon for Astra against Pandurii
0‑1 to Pandurii, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Bogdan Deac 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 43. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match7 Sep 2026
Every point is an argument now for Astra
Position 10 and 2 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Market7 Sep 2026
Bogdan Deac hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Astra can pretend not to have heard.
Match5 Sep 2026
6 matches without a win for Astra
The run now stands at 6, and the questions being asked around Astra are no longer polite ones.
Squad7 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 Astra this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Florin Moldovan 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.
Squad7 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
6 new faces, and Astra are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Match5 Sep 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Botosani leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.