FCM Ungheni lost 1-3 in the first match of the season, on Saturday, 1 August, kicking off at 18.00, at the municipal stadium in Ungheni. It was the opening round of Liga 1 — the second tier of Moldovan football — and the opponent was Vulturii Cutezători. The town’s team led from the 12th minute and went in at the break 1-2 down, after the visitors scored twice in first-half stoppage time.
There were 300 spectators in the stands, according to the official match report. That is the biggest attendance of the round in Group A: in Comrat, where CF Univer lost 0-2 to FC Iskra, the report records 200 spectators, and in Chișinău, at the Zimbru-2 – CSF Spartanii-Sportul match, 100.
The four minutes that changed the match
Andrei Stratan, number 80, opened the scoring in the 12th minute. Ungheni held the lead for almost the whole first half.
The turnaround came in its stoppage time. In the 45+1 minute, Vadim Gulceac equalised, and three minutes later, in the 45+4, Alexandru Gău put the visitors ahead. A 1-0 lead for the hosts became 1-2 in four minutes of added time.
In the second half, Denis Secureanu set the final score in the 60th minute. None of the four goals came from an 11-metre penalty kick, according to the report.
(The federation’s communiqué gives the 43rd minute for Gulceac’s goal. The official match report, signed electronically by the referee, indicates 45+1 — that is the minute used here.)
Who played
The side coached by Dorin Bambuleac started the match in the following line-up, with Octavian Vătavu as captain:
- Goalkeeper: 1 Lucian Cebotari
- Outfield: 3 Nicu Grițunic · 4 Vasile Marjin · 8 Ilia Pavlov · 9 Artiom Sigal · 10 Florin Cojocaru · 11 Stanislav Sarain · 22 Alexandru Ursu · 30 Bogdan Plăcintă · 77 Octavian Vătavu (captain) · 80 Andrei Stratan
The coach made two substitutions right at half-time: Artiom Sigal and Bogdan Plăcintă came off for David Cemschi and Dmitri Maneacov. In the 57th minute Artiom Zvezdenco also came on, in place of Stanislav Sarain. Remaining on the bench were goalkeeper Cristian Cebotari, Denis Vătavu and Adrian Enache.
The referee in the middle was Serghei Gavriliuc, who showed two yellow cards, both to the Ungheni players: to Bogdan Plăcintă in the 11th minute and to Vasile Marjin in the 32nd, in both cases for a foul committed “in a careless manner”, according to the report. The visitors finished the match without a single card.
Who are Vulturii Cutezători
Saturday’s opponent comes from Sîngerei — at home they play at the municipal stadium there — and moved up to Liga 1 only this summer, from the third tier: last season, Vulturii Cutezători were playing in Liga 2, Seria Nord. The competition regulations, approved by the federation’s Executive Committee on 19 June, reserve a single place in Group A for the winner of that series — “a team finishing first in the Liga 2 Championship, Seria Nord, of the previous edition”. Of the six teams in the group, they are the only ones who played in the third tier last season.
The scorer of the goal that made it 1-3, Denis Secureanu, netted 18 goals in 16 matches last season — the highest figure in the entire Liga 2 scorers’ list, published by the federation for both series.
The team is coached by Dumitru Turcu, and its captain is Ivan Urvanțev. The coach made four substitutions in Ungheni, the first as early as the 36th minute.
The two sides will meet twice more in this phase: in Sîngerei, in round 6 (4–5 September), and again in Ungheni, in round 11 (23–24 October).
What the table shows after the first round
Group A split exactly in two after the opening round: three teams on maximum points, three without a single point.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | Goals | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zimbru-2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4-0 | 3 |
| 2 | Vulturii Cutezători | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3-1 | 3 |
| 3 | FC Iskra | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2-0 | 3 |
| 4 | FCM Ungheni | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1-3 | 0 |
| 5 | CF Univer | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0-2 | 0 |
| 6 | CSF Spartanii-Sportul | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0-4 | 0 |
FCM Ungheni sits in 4th place, level on points with the bottom two. There are 14 rounds left until the end of the first phase, on 27 November.
Why it matters where the group ends
What is at stake this autumn is larger than the sum of the points. According to Annex 5 of the regulations, the six teams in the group play one another three times, “in a home-away-home system”, and at the end of the 15 rounds the paths part decisively:
- Places 1 and 2 go into Group 1 of Phase II: six teams, four of them arriving from the top two places of Groups A and B, plus two placed 7th and 8th after the first phase of Liga 7777. “All teams will begin Phase II of the competition with zero points”, 10 matches are played, and whoever wins those 10 rounds is declared winner of Liga 1 and “will receive the right to play in the next edition of the Liga 7777 competition”.
- Places 3–6 go into Group 2, which they enter with half the points gathered in the first phase — but only from the matches against the teams that moved up into Group 1 — and from there promotion can be obtained only through a play-off.
It was on exactly that play-off route that Ungheni came to a halt last season: after finishing first in its group in the second phase, the team lost the decisive match against FC Florești on 16 May. The difference between 2nd and 3rd place in this group therefore means the difference between the short road and the long road to the top flight.
Promotion, however, is not decided only on the pitch. The same regulations provide that the entitled teams move up “on condition that they obtain the respective licence for the first tier” — a licence granted annually, separately from sporting results. In April, the federation’s licensing body granted the Ungheni club, as it did most of the sides in the tier, Licence “A”, which “gives clubs the right to play in the second tier of the Republic of Moldova’s football championship (Liga 1), on a stadium approved by the FMF”.
The summer before
The start of the season comes after a preseason against opponents from a higher level. In the summer friendlies, FCM Ungheni drew 0-0 with Dacia Buiucani, lost 3-4 to Zimbru’s first team and 0-1 in Bacău, against a side from Romania’s Liga 2, and on 17 July beat Zimbru-2 itself 4-2 — the team that now leads the group after a 4-0. The summer’s record: four matches, one win, one draw, two defeats.
The club had called its supporters to the stadium two days before the match — “Let us fill the stands and give the players the energy and encouragement they need” — and one minute after announcing the final result it published a short message: “We offer our sincere thanks to the supporters who were present”.
Saturday, away to Spartanii-Sportul
The second round takes the Ungheni players away from home, on Saturday, 8 August, kicking off at 18.00, to CSF Spartanii-Sportul. In the federation’s communiqué, the stadium for this match is not indicated.
The next home match is on 15 August, against CF Univer, also kicking off at 18.00.