At Friday’s match on 17 July, played at home at the municipal stadium, FCM Ungheni beat FC Zimbru 2 Chișinău 4-2 in a preseason friendly. According to the club, the scorers were Placintă Bogdan, Stratan Andrei, Sampson Ekyem and Cojocaru Florin. It is the team’s first win this summer.
Not just a sparring match, but a direct opponent
Although it is a friendly, the opponent is not a lower-tier side. Zimbru-2 is FC Zimbru’s reserve team, but it plays in the same division and the same Group A of Liga 1 — Moldova’s second tier — as FCM Ungheni. In the 2026/27 season the two teams will meet three times in Phase I — on matchdays 4, 9 and 14. Friday’s match was therefore Ungheni’s first test against a direct league rival, after three friendlies against teams from other divisions.
FCM Ungheni played the reserve team rather than Zimbru’s first team for a scheduling reason: the capital club’s first team is already in season, in Liga 7777, while Zimbru-2 starts its championship on 31 July, exactly like Ungheni. The two are therefore in the same preseason window.
The summer’s record: one win, one draw, two defeats
With Friday’s result, the team’s public friendlies now number four matches: 0-0 against Dacia Buiucani (13 June), 3-4 against Zimbru’s first team (around 20 June), 0-1 at FC Bacău, in Romania’s Liga 2 (27 June), and 4-2 against Zimbru-2. The summer’s record thus comes to one win, one draw and two defeats, with a goal aggregate of 7–7. Friday’s four goals account for more than half of the seven the team has scored across all of the summer’s friendlies.
What a 4-2 in preseason says — and what it does not
A 4-2 scoreline in a friendly does not support a firm conclusion about form, especially without the line-ups that took the field and the match details. What can be said with certainty is that this was the first win and the best attacking output of the summer, but also that the defence conceded two goals to a reserve team, after keeping a clean sheet in the first friendly, against Dacia Buiucani.
Two of the four scorers — Placintă Bogdan and Sampson Ekyem — did not appear in the last official squad list published by the FMF, which lists the other two scorers. The list for the 2026/27 season has not yet been published by the federation.
The side coached by Dorin Bambuleac has roughly two weeks of preparation left: the Liga 1 championship starts on 31 July, at home, against Vulturii Cutezători.