The final of the Ungheni District Football Cup, the «MAGIRUS», 2026 edition, will be played between FC Mănoilești and FC Unirea Cetireni. The two finalists were decided on Sunday, 26 July, in the return legs of the semifinals: one without any drama, the other only on penalties, after 90 minutes in which FC Sculeni clawed back, goal by goal, the entire lead Cetireni had built up in the first leg.
Mănoilești, 5–1 at Bumbăta and 7–1 on aggregate
The first match of the day kicked off at 10.00, at the Bumbăta stadium. FC Mănoilești, who came with a 2–0 from the home first leg, won away as well, 5–1. The aggregate score of the semifinal is 7–1, announced the Ungheni Territorial Football Association (ATF), the organiser of the competition.
The day before the match, the club had written to its players that “together we can take one more step and qualify for the GRAND FINAL!”
Photograph published by ATF Ungheni alongside the announcement that FC Mănoilești had qualified for the final. Photo: Ungheni Territorial Football Association
Cetireni – Sculeni: 4–0 for the visitors after 90 minutes, then extra time and penalties
The second semifinal, scheduled for 18.00 at the Cetireni stadium, was the match of the evening. FC Unirea Cetireni started from a lead that was hard to imagine melting away: they had won the first leg on the road, at Sculeni, 4–0.
It melted in exactly 90 minutes. FC Sculeni scored four times on the pitch at Cetireni and, at the end of normal time, led 4–0 — the aggregate score had come level, 4–4, and the match went to extra time. The two additional periods ended 1–1, so 5–5 on aggregate, and qualification was settled on penalties, where FC Unirea Cetireni came through 5–3.
The club from Cetireni described the evening without sparing itself, in a message published shortly after the final whistle.
Today we suffered…. Luck was on our side. FC Unirea Cetireni, public message after the match
The message ends with an apology addressed to the club’s own supporters, after an evening in which the team did, after all, qualify for the final: “We apologise to our supporters and backers.”
How they got here
For FC Unirea Cetireni, this is the second turnaround in the same edition, but a mirror image of the first. In the quarterfinals, the team had lost the first leg 0–2 against FC Regina Maria Ungheni and overturned the result in the return leg. This time it was in the other role — the side defending a lead — and it still came out with qualification, by the narrowest of margins.
FC Mănoilești also came through the quarterfinals narrowly, 7–5 on aggregate against FC Speranța Semeni, and then won both legs of the semifinal against FC Haiduc Bumbăta.
On 22 July, after the first leg of that semifinal, the ATF Competitions Commission had suspended a player and the representative of FC Haiduc Bumbăta for three matches each, for offensive conduct and threats against the referees; the club was fined 1,400 lei for these breaches. The decision was taken on the basis of the match reports.
The date and venue of the final have not yet been publicly announced by ATF Ungheni.
The results and the schedule of the return legs come from the official posts of the Ungheni Territorial Football Association, the organiser of the district «MAGIRUS» Cup 2026, retrieved while authenticated from the association’s page. The staging of the match at Cetireni is independently confirmed by the public message of FC Unirea Cetireni. The first-leg scores and the disciplinary sanctions were recorded earlier by Triunghi.md, on the basis of the ATF announcements. The photographs were published by ATF Ungheni.