promotion play-offs to Liga III which they won by forfeit because the team they were drawn against could not play the match. In the 2018-2019 season, U Craiova 1948 now in Liga III, former player Mădălin Ciucă returned as team captain until his retiring after the season. Unfortunately the team failed to gain promotion to Liga II after finishing on second place. FC U Craiova tried again to promote to Liga II during the 2019–20 season of Liga III after they were drawn in a series IV consisting of teams from south-west region of Romania and Eugen Trică being appointed as manager. The team were leading the table by 13 point from the second place with 13 wins, 3 draws and 0 defeats but the season was interrupted on 9 March 2020, after 16 rounds, due to COVID-19 pandemic. On 11 May 2020, the Romanian Football Federation announced that the season was discontinued and the best-ranked teams from each series (after 16 rounds) were promoted to Liga II. For the 2020–21 U Craiova 1948 brought a lot of reinforcement like Jérémy Huyghebaert, Andrea Compagno and the representative of the youth nationals teams Dragoș Albu who would later become team's captain in order to get the promotion in the first year. The season saw U Craiova on top of the league most of the time but during it, there were five managerial changes. Eugen Trică will get sacked in the pre-season in favor of former manager Nicolò Napoli who was in his sixth spell at the club. He left with a high profile win against Bucharest rivals Rapid București, only to be replaced by Dan Vasilică who was the caretaker for the team until Ovidiu Stîngă was appointed. Eventually after poor results from Stîngă, Trică returned once again. Ultimately U Craiova reached the play-offs of the competition and got the promotion to Liga 1 after a draw against FK Miercurea Ciuc, and later secured the title after a win over Rapid. This promotion meant that after a lot of ups and downs over the last 10 years, U Craiova 1948 got in to the first tier of romanian football for the first time since 2011. For the first year in Liga I, after a 10 years absence U Craiova changed a lot in the squad whith a lot of players no longer needed many foreigners were brought to the club most