Politehnica Timisoara qualified for the third round of the Romanian Cup after today’s 5-3 victory, after penalty kicks, against the hosts Progresul Pecica. It was 3-3 after 90 minutes of the game, as well as after the two extra overtime periods. Our team led 3-1 at half-time.

The hosts opened the scoring early, in the 2nd minute, after an error in the center of the white-violet defense, which Samir Borcea took advantage of. He stepped up and fired a shot from the box past young goalkeeper Mihai Enășescu, a 2007-born debutant, as well as his backup – Felix Pop (both from their own nursery).

The young Poles didn’t feel any shock and in the 12th minute David Popa equalized with a shot under the bar after a low cross from the right wing by captain Marincu. Moreover, our team took control of the game and went ahead. From the 36th minute it was 2-1 after the most spectacular goal of the match: perfect cross Miclăuș – “scissors” Sebastian Avrămescu to the right of M. Gakos. Six minutes later Avrămescu became a servant with a similar cross for Dan Pureca’s header.

In the second half, Progresul came back into the match and equalized the situation on the scoreboard after a “double” by the Ukrainian Kyrychenko (63 and 71 minutes). Kyryryrychenchenko first took advantage of a rebound from close range and pushed the rebound into the net, before hitting Enășescu from the edge of the box. In the 79th minute, I. L. Rotariu was unlucky as the ball he sent in from the edge of the box was deflected into the crossbar by a defender. The same thing happened with Avrămescu’s resulting corner.

Both teams had further goal-scoring chances in extra time. Grancea, a player transferred to Poli this summer, failed to find the right solution from an angle in the 113th minute when a defender cleared the danger off the goal line. The hosts could have avoided the spot-kicks if Borcea had been more inspired in front of Enășescu five minutes later.

In the penalty shoot-out, all five of our side’s designated penalty takers scored! David Popa, Cristi Grancea, Sebastian Avrămescu, Iosif L. Rotariu and David Ciurel, the last one bringing the qualification. Suslak, Aldan and Haloș scored for Progresul Pecica, but the junior in the Politehnica goal, Mihai Enășescu, saved the fourth goal, that of E. Wild!

Progresul Pecica: M. Gakos (58, F. Burtic) – Halos, Suslak, D. Călin (58, Bain), Aldan (cap.) – Olăroiu, Salka – Răchită, Bozian (46, Wild) – Borcea – Kyrychenko (87, Matyus; 109, D. Stanciu) – On the bench: – Hara. Coach: Dan Stupar.

Politehnica Timișoara: Enășescu – Miclăuș (111, M. Lazăr), Vlaicu, D. Roșu, R. Ciurel (61, T. Hus) – Pureca (61, D. Ciurel), I. L. Rotariu, Avrămescu – Marincu (captain; 77, Grancea), D. Popa, Boariu (89, D. Rosca). F. Pop -. Coach: Cristian Gălan.

“I don’t think we could have had a more spectacular start to the new season. It was a very nice match, a match with many goals, unfortunately we suffer a little because of our youth in some decisions we make during the game but the boys fought admirably and they deserve our congratulations. It was not as low tempo as I expected after the 90 minutes, it was also very hot. The boys fought, indeed, one of our players developed muscle cramps in the 100th minute or so, but they were very good, I liked them, they fought very hard“, said Cristian Gălan, who made his debut as Politehnicii’s head coach in an official game.

“We have a beautiful Academy that has been worked on for a long time, people work very hard and these kids deserve to be seen. They deserve it because they work every day, they work very hard and the circumstances of the club, the situation with the age level of the team, now allow us to give them more minutes, to have a better visibility and as a reward they put everything they have on the pitch. We absolutely cannot complain about them in terms of effort. We can see mistakes, but we don’t look for them,” said Gălan about the large number of youngsters from the Politehnica Academy used at Pecica.

About the next Romanian Cup game, which will be in a week’s time, the coach concluded: “For us it’s very important to have matches, because the program we inherited was made in advance and we try to respect it, but there were few matches. These Cup games give us some extra matches, because they are official matches in which we can prepare the team and think about an official game and then we want to be in the Cup as much as possible. Next Wednesday we will definitely have a Cup game, now at the end of the week, if we had lost, we would have definitely taken another friendly, but that’s not the case anymore. Tomorrow they will have a day off because physically it’s been very tough. The vast majority of the players had around 60 minutes played, at least, some 120. The least Marco Lazăr, who came on in the 110th minute“.

Erceanu, V. Prună and Huminic could not be used today for medical reasons.
“I think we are under 20 years old, we have a young team but that’s not an excuse, we don’t even think about it, on the contrary, we try to play every game the way we want to play. It is obvious that often the opponent’s value may be higher than ours, we adapt ourselves to his game, when we have the chance to play the way we want, we do it!”, Cristian Gălan, head coach Politehnica Timisoara