Nicolae Croitoru, Politehnica’s head coach, regrets that his team didn’t make it to the semi-finals of the Romanian Cup, being defeated in a penalty shootout by first division FC Argeș.

“It wasn’t to be, we would have liked to go further. Especially since this is also the club’s celebration, a special one – 100 years since its foundation – and I think that if we had managed to qualify for the semi-finals it would have been a special contribution on our part,” said Nicolae Croitoru.

The Politehnica coach also spoke about the effect of the sending off of Octavian Ursu, who saw his second caution at the end of regulation time: “Of course it mattered in the economy of the game. We had to put in more effort. We didn’t have any more attacking strength. For sure, the consumption was quite high. Especially as we have a very difficult game against Astra in three days’ time.”

“The fact that we didn’t concede a goal for 120 minutes, especially that we played more than 30 minutes with a man down, I think it shows that defensively the game was pretty well thought out. I think, and I hope I’m not wrong, if you look at the scoring ratio we were pretty good there too, because we had three good scoring chances in the first half and I think we had another one in the second half. Unfortunately we lost on penalties…“, concluded Croitoru.