Marked 9.55 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
A performance of 9.52 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Marius Keseru 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Ovidiu Dragusin. 2‑0 against FCSB, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
0‑0 against Twente, 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.
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.
Florin Ştefan 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.
“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 0 appearances in 6 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at Petrolul 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.
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.
23 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it 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 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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Petrolul heard it as anything else.
Marked 9.04 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Alejandro Monsalve 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.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Cristian Puscas was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.96. 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.
Michael Pavlović had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Dinamo Bucharest were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
7.95, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
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.
Marked 8.12 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
24 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Mihai 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.
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 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.
10 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
“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.
Paul Cicaldau 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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
A defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
12 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Successful dribbles: 32. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
A brace, and Marius Keseru takes the afternoon — 7.85
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Marius Keseru provided it, and the 7.85 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Florin Ştefan 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 terraces17 Aug 2026
Petrolul spend $360.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $360.0K for Daniel Deac, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Daniel Deac is 19, and Petrolul have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
He is going to Udinese, the club has $9.0M 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.
The offer from Slovan Liberec for Razvan Stanciu 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.
Florin Ştefan 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.
Marked 9.33 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 20 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.47 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
The offer from Krylya Sovetov for Adrian Tanase 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.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Razvan Stanciu did not need any: 8.25, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
The phone has started ringing about Ianis Burca again, and this time the name on the line is Udinese. Petrolul are listening politely and promising nothing.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Petrolul heard it as anything 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Razvan Stanciu 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.