CSM Râmnicu Vâlcea secured a narrow 1-0 victory over Dumbrăvița in the fifth round of Liga II on Saturday, a result that keeps the visitors in ninth place while the hosts remain rooted at the bottom of the table. The match, played in front of a modest crowd, was decided by a single moment of precision in the seventy-fourth minute when V. Constantin found the back of the net.
And here's the thing about this game — Dumbrăvița had their chance to level the score or take the lead, and they couldn't take it. A. Seroni stood over the penalty spot in the seventy-first minute and missed, and that price has gone. You can see it in the way the visitors pressed after that, knowing the hosts were reeling from a moment they'd built their hopes around.
By then the statistics told the fuller story. CSM Râmnicu Vâlcea registered 74 attacks against 59, and their eight shots on target compared to Dumbrăvița's four showed they were creating more genuine danger. Possession sat at 55 per cent for the visitors, but numbers alone don't capture the pressure of a missed penalty when you're chasing a result.
Dumbrăvița's substitutions tell their own tale. B. Pitulac came on for A. Butu early in the second half, and with the score still level the hosts threw bodies forward. C. Doman, N. Pop, D. Dussaut and D. Mucuta all saw action, but the visitors' defensive shape held firm against the surge.
The scoreboard doesn't lie, though it doesn't tell the whole story either. CSM Râmnicu Vâlcea now sit on eight points from five games, while Dumbrăvița remain on three with no wins and two defeats. The gap between them is not vast, but it feels significant when you've just watched one side miss a penalty and the other convert a chance.
What matters now is what comes next. The visitors have shown they can grind out results against teams that start the season without a win, and that kind of consistency is what separates mid-table from the bottom. Dumbrăvița will need to find a way to take their chances — because missing one doesn't come cheap.