Article by Mihai Mironică – published Monday, October 6, 2025, 08:43 / Updated Monday, October 6, 2025 08:43
A press conference of Mirel Rădoiwith all the imperfections of the Craiova coach's speech, it is always preferable to the performance of the FCSB rival coach. First of all, when you listen to Rădoi, you really have the feeling that the team coach speaks to you. In front of you is a living man, with experiences, disappointments, satisfactions, ideas. The appearance of Elias Charalambous in front of the journalists is like accessing that application in which you enter some keywords and ask for a text. It comes out, it can be right, but it is lifeless, authenticity.
Charalambous's appearances are a formality that the regulations of the Superliga require. They have a major meeting with a “press secretary” who is asked about the president's decisions.
Cypriot is the ideal dreamed of by Becali: a coach who does not issue anything special, personal in public. But nothing to be civilized. With Charalambous speaking, I am teleported in the 1980s when people had developed in Romania, as everywhere in the middle of Europe under the “Russian wisdom” slipper, the ability not to say anything in many words. Life in communism was a continuous press conference of Charalambous.
Craiova, rabbit or lion?
Instead, Mirel Rădoi reminds me of the sensation I lived when I discovered, after showing the red card to Nea Nicu, that people can speak freely, with their own thoughts and imperfections. One of these imperfections would be that Rădoi tried to cover the series of four parties without victory, including three failures, with the memory of his university that held the name of Craiova most in our elite league in the last 35 years, as they are from the last title of Oltenia.
Well, U Cluj was a leader in the Superliga last season an impressive period and, in the end, it turned out that it was just a rabbit that later took part of the true candidates for the title and ended on the 4th place. Now, in Craiova, no one wants to be rabbit, but a lion. Lion like the one for whom the club fought through the courts to have an extra legitimacy in front of the fans.
Mirel Rădoi ironized how he defeated FCSB. That he did it in a mean way and not an aesthetic one. That FCSB would have pulled out of time. Well, a referee who led a Champions League final was at the center. From the height of his extraordinary authority, Istvan Kovacs could extend with a quarter of the second half if they had considered these time -invoked ravo -invoked.
Football is a sport in which you call on any tactics accepted by rules and referee to win. It is not an aesthetic contest of the game. It is a competition on putting the ball in the gate.
So much. And Craiova was not put it because Cicâldău was a little below the ball at the excellent center of Nsimba. If he was on the field Baiaram, the one held on the bench of Rădoi, he would have buried the ball in the host gate because he had the additional centimeters. Not even the chairlift in the gate because he was not as precise as in the match with Dinamo.
Screciu, Rădoi's heel
Instead, FCSB said thanks for Screciu's gift, he became gate and that was it. It is the second consecutive match in which Rădoi and his are left with the pants come by the ridiculous blows of Screciu.
A central defender in Rădoi's vision, Screciu is summoned to national as a midfielder. Also as a midfielder, Screciu made the match of his life in front of Switzerland, in the Euro preliminaries. And he would have played in the final tournament as a midfielder if he was not injured. But Rădoi insists with him as a defender and we see what is happening.
The height of Rădoi's misses in the after -match speech was reached when the Craiova coach said that FCSB only threatened by transitions. Even if it were so, what importance is?
Nottingham Forest was last season in the 18th place in the Premier League on possession. But he ended the 7 -point championship, returned after 30 years in the European Cups and was right at a Champions League point. Nuno Espirito Santo had built an excellent transition team. Ange Postecoglou came this season, he took Forest on the 5th possession, but on 17 in the points ranking. Transition is more important than possession.
The most praised team of the season, Craiova, goes through the most difficult moment of this season. Rădoi must find a way to be transformed into points. FCSB is much more coarse, it is not as fine as Rădoi's team. But Becali's mastodon seems to have been moving in the championship.
