Article by Narcis Drejan – Published on Tuesday, 14 April 2026, 22:38 / Updated on Tuesday, 14 April 2026 22:38
The play-offs don't pay the salaries, but it seems that the declarations to the moon are not good either, as it turned out Dani Coman to give explanations about the big performance with a lot of money. But don't you know where you're coming from when you sign? That way we can also go to any county team and give ourselves experts.
FC Argeș collects points, produces results, keeps its head above water in a play-off in which it is not allowed to blink, but behind these numbers there is a reality that no one can disguise: 3 months of salary arrears in a club that received millions of public money.
But are we still surprised? It's a symptom Romanian football has been dealing with for years, in fact, always, but now we don't know how to become more lenient with public money.
Football doesn't work on the table, but on balance, and when the financial balance disappears, performance becomes a happy accident, that's at best, and in Pitesti it's the same as everywhere else where public money is pumped.
But you know what's weird? That in all these years, this is how all the clubs supported exclusively by the money of the City Hall have failed, in the next elections, if Gentea doesn't come out, what will happen to FC Argeș? Are Coman's statements warming up now? No way!
Public money, infusion or addiction
The case of Pitesti is not isolated, but it is emblematic of a model that refuses to die, that model in which the club does not live from what it produces, but from what it receives, and the moment the faucet closes or is delayed, the whole system goes into convulsions.
Cristian Gentea and Dani Coman ask for support, send messages, look for solutions, but the question remains suspended: how long can a club that depends almost exclusively on the local budget be supported and which, despite this support, ends up not paying its players?
Dani Coman, with the mayor Cristian Gentea, immediately after the promotion of FC Argeș to the first league / PHOTO: Andrei Furnigă (GSP)
Because the difference between help and dependence is not a semantic one, it's a structural one. And by the way, didn't you know from the beginning that if no businessman has come so far, nothing will happen from now on either? Or that the budget is delayed year after year and the penny from the state does not come? But alas, it's hard without money! It's just like the homeless guy goes to the mall and says, “I can't afford anything without money!”
“If” and “As if”, the national strategy
If investors came, if the budget wasn't delayed, if a sponsor appeared, if things turned out differently, but football is not played on a conditional basis, and plans built on “maybe” have a bad habit of collapsing just when you need them the most.
Football Romania has been living for many years in this gray area, where the ambitions are top-notch, but the foundation is of the lower league, where one dreams high, but builds precariously. Comparisons are not only inevitable, they are also dangerous, because between Manchester City and the reality in Pitesti, there is not only a difference in budget, but one in philosophy, structure, vision.
But many times we come up with these unfortunate comparisons, if Guardiola came, if Mourinho came, if the Arabs came to Mioveni and put money in Pitesti, through Câmpulung Muscel. The problem is not that you don't have money like Manchester City, the problem is that you're acting as if you could function to the same expectations without having the same resourceswithout having the same mechanisms, without having the same guarantees.
And when reality hits you, the reaction isn't recalibration, it's this cheap philandering, then the embarrassing statement of a mayor shouting at the moon, right? That I don't understand who should feel, that Argeș was in the play-off before and the billions still didn't come, no businessman gathered there.
Performance starts from accounting
As uncomfortable as it sounds, modern football no longer starts on the field, but in offices, in contracts, in budgets built realistically, not optimistically, in decisions that take into account what you have, not what you hope to have.
When you have drawn the line, the arrears are not the news, but the normality with which they are accepted, the crisis is not the problem, but the fact that it becomes predictable, almost part of the club's identity.
And so it will be in Argeș and in any club that is sitting on the fence, until “if” and “as if” are replaced by “we have” and “we can”, all that remains is a fragile performance, kept alive by results and constantly undermined by reality. Don't you think that we are often stupid with this football in our country and with millions of euros thrown out the window?
