Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 58 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Assad Al Hamlawi 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.
“I watch every Universitatea Craiova game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Viitorul runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Monday Etim is on it.
Position 5, 25 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Universitatea Craiova would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and David Barbu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Viitorul this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Anton Krešić 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.
Nobody at Viitorul will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Viitorul know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Universitatea Craiova will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Assad Al Hamlawi 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.
“I did not go to Viitorul to sit and watch. I want to come back to Universitatea Craiova and fight for my place.” 1 appearances in 13 matches say the rest.
Nobody at Universitatea Craiova will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
25 points from position 5. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Universitatea Craiova. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 118 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Assad Al Hamlawi 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.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Universitatea Craiova and Viitorul in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
He is 21 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Viitorul have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Anton Krešić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Razvan Coman to a room that had heard them before.
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.
Successful dribbles: 12. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Universitatea Craiova will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
A brace, and Simon Elisor takes the afternoon — 9.48
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Simon Elisor provided it, and the 9.48 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Assad Al Hamlawi 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 a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. David Matei 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.
Marked 8.75. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Universitatea Craiova.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Universitatea Craiova people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Pavlo Isenko had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Dinamo Bucharest have kept their man, and Universitatea Craiova go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“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 Universitatea Craiova, and it is not being withdrawn.
$480.0K on the table at CFR Cluj. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.