Article by Justin Gafiuc – Published Sunday, November 16, 2025, 7:47 p.m. / Updated Sunday, November 16, 2025, 7:47 p.m.
Denis Drăguș was eliminated in Zenica after three minutes on the lawn and a karate foul, opening the door to a lamentable failure for the national team. But let's talk without detours about the man Denis Drăguș, who pushes the career of the footballer with the same name into the abyss. But there is one more chance to save!
This text is not about a red card. Either about an elimination, or one that consecrates the national team's suffocation in a match that could open more favorable paths for us in the barrage to the World Cup.
There are also moments of mental blankness, when you make an irresponsible gesture, with which you drive all your colleagues to the wall. Although, at Zenica, Drăguș had barely entered the field, he was fresh, and his brain was functioning at lucidity parameters. It's not comfortable, but football is also about suffering and frustration, not just about millions of euros in accounts, beautiful girls and extravagant holidays.
It's not the end of the country, no one died, we definitely got used to the bitter feeling of absences from the CM, but it should at least be a lesson!
This text is about the man Denis Drăguș, on whom the footballer with the same name was built. There is no one without the other, because there are two sides that organically intertwine.
“The boy's crazy! Oh, he's crazy!”
Denis Drăguș grew up in Hagi's Academy, where he turned his head towards performance
I have known Denis since he was a little 5-6 years old, through the lens of his father, Mihai, a striker with an honest CV, spent at Dinamo and FC Argeș, champion in South Korea with Samsung Blue Wings in 1998, alongside Cosmin Olăroiu.
He loves his boyfriend like the apple of his eye, as does his mother, Laura. They raised him, educated him as best they could, helped him as any parent would do.
They did everything in their power to give the boy a path in life. Maybe sometimes harsher? Who knows?, but I never imagine a Mihai Drăguș as a guy capable of humiliating his own son through aggressive attitudes, just out of a desire to force him to become a good footballer.
For Denis, everything came, in fact, somehow naturally over time, through genes, a lot of work and a kind of rebellion that still runs through his veins today. He quickly rose to the top, and his thoroughbred striker qualities were making waves in youth football even before Hagi recruited him for the Academy in 2014.
“The boy is crazy! Well, he's crazy, not that he's mine! You'll see, there's no way he won't succeed! There's no way!”, his father often boasted, including after a game in the junior championship in Bucharest, in which the child had scored six goals in one half, all for his team at the time, Pro Luceafărul.
The national team, the magical heel and a comforting kid
Denis Drăguș made his senior national team debut in a 2-2 draw with Serbia in Belgrade, under Cosmin Contra, at the age of 19 PHOTO: Guliver/Getty Images
Then, the career moved, indeed, quickly forward, with a Denis Drăguș burning the stages, as befits a super talent: champion with Viitorulu's juniors, in the group of the big team for the title in 2017, debut in the Romanian Cup at 16 years old and a bit, at 18 years old in League 1, and his first goal – an absolutely magical heel in a lost game with Botoșaniul.
At 19 years and two months, the adventure at the national team began, under Cosmin Contra, with two games against Serbia, 2-2 and 0-0. Plus goals in the championship and a remarkable “double” with Vitesse in the Europa League. An explosive quota, a modest boy, coherent, educated and civilized in public appearances. A great comforting figure!
Out of nowhere, the collapse, the arrogance, the misunderstood star
But, suddenly, something happened that changed him as if he had entered a laboratory to recreate people overnight. His entourage and private life turned him 180 degrees, in a snobbish, arrogant, superior Denis Drăguș, with his nose up, ifose and an aura of a misunderstood star. Or is it just a mask?
However, Hagi knew and understood what was happening with him, so he urgently gave in to the first clear offer, from Standard Liege, for 1.8 million euros and a percentage of 30% on resale, sensing that the player entered the wrong path and would quickly destroy his quota.
He preferred a financially undervalued transfer for a 20-year-old striker on the rise than, at short notice, crumbs for a player in danger of deflating for extrasportive and mental reasons. Damage control, in business terms!
Gheorghe Hagi sensed from 2019 that Denis Drăguș went down the wrong path and quickly sold him to Liege PHOTO: Facebook @Farul Constanța
And the “King” read correctly. Belgium was a nightmare. Five minutes in the first season, then cargo for loans to Crotone, Genoa, Gaziantep, short periods of return, but flashes in a dark sky.
Only Şumudica, through his unconventional style of tickling the pride of the players, got him back on his feet in Turkey, also becoming his spiritual father as godfather.
Abandoned parents, impresario pulled on a string, threats from the entourage
During this time, however, Denis had a definitive argument with his parents, whom he did not even invite to the little girl's baptism and wedding. Since 2019, years without contact with mom and dad, punished to suffer in silence in the name of movie scripts. Only occasional short thaws, which do not change the story of almost total parental abandonment.
Denis Drăguș chose to break almost completely the relationship with his father, Mihai
An open conflict with his former impresario, Florin Manea, who found him a generous contract in Trabzon to then end up in a public argument about his refusal to answer his phones and pay the percentages owed.
It seems to be a style, because there is still at least one case where Drăguș pretends to be raining money, but the “victim” prefers, for now, to remain in the shadows.
And from Drăguș's entourage, warlike speeches do not stop coming to anyone who is identified as an “enemy” of the footballer, some perhaps even without the knowledge of Denis, who has ended up captive in a prison that he does not see. This is what people say who have also experienced the brutal transformation of the international, behind the scenes, away from the spotlight.
Ask Hagi about the press conferences of the '90s!
It's the same Denis Drăguș who shakes his hand when uncomfortable questions are asked after the Zenica blunder. That was a mosquito bite! Ask Hagi how the press conferences were in the 90s, when an army of serious journalists chopped you until you had no air left for a wrong pass, because you unknowingly received a “red” with which you largely decided the “final” with Bosnia.
Now guys are used to only lukewarm approaches and anything that comes out of the PR womb and patted on the back becomes a crime of majesty. It wouldn't hurt to have a cure with extraveral at times like this!
What is the difference, therefore, between Drăguș from the beginning, until the accounts are spinning like in mechanical games, and Drăguș today, whose heels do not fit anymore at the end, see the spectacular, failed attempt from the recent friendly with Canada. It's as if the ball sometimes gives him signals that it doesn't want to be friendly to this Denis today!
The only chance: Denis and God
Denis Drăguș, the image of despair after the blunder in Zenica. Photo: Primasport capture
But all is not lost. There is still time for a character reconversion. With one condition: Denis to walk alone in front of the mirror, but alone-alone, absolutely alone!and honestly ask himself if he wants, at the end of his career, his daughters to see framed, big!, in the living room of the villa, the image of their father's joy from the first anthem sung in the “national” shirt or the devastating picture of his body collapsed and in tears after the disaster in Bosnia.
Yes, all is not lost for himself and for the national team! Head up Denis, courage and don't forget to have that blood dialogue with yourself in front of the mirror. Alone, just you and God! Wake up! Success!
