39 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. WSG Tirol lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at WSG Tirol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Vesel Demaku falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at WSG Tirol can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Thomas Sabitzer signs something — a contract at WSG Tirol or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
In brief
The dugoutTobias Anselm asks for a word with the manager
The dugoutThe manager plants his flag on Marcel Ecker
Position 10 and 19 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” WSG Tirol have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The offer from Shonan Bellmare for Ademola Ola-Adebomi was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and David Gugganig was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
WSG Tirol asked and Watford said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Dean Titkov was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation WSG Tirol are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Schwarz-Weiß Bregenz had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” WSG Tirol have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The fee is $740.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Rapid Wien drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
WSG Tirol had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Slavia Prague, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Admira Wacker paid $400.0K and WSG Tirol took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and David Gugganig was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
David Jaunegg and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
David Jaunegg was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. WSG Tirol know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at WSG Tirol would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Successful dribbles: 37. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Out, 1‑2 to Austria Klagenfurt, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at WSG Tirol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
7 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Marcel Ecker was one of the reasons people came, and $520.0K does not replace that by itself.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what First Vienna can pretend not to have heard.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 15 arrived, 4 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Benjamin Rosenberger was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Meguru Odagaki has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“24 caps was 24 more than the boy who started ever expected.” At 34 he has stepped away from the national side and has not stepped away from First Vienna.
The clubs have shaken hands with Grazer AK; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Matthäus Taferner reports back to WSG Tirol with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 17 signed and 5 gone
That is the business done at WSG Tirol until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $85.3K — a club that wants Christopher Giuliani enough to be asked twice.
The fee is $520.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. First Vienna drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Mateo Kesikj has, at WSG Tirol, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
WSG Tirol offered $80.0K; First Vienna said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Red Bull Salzburg have kept their man, and WSG Tirol go back to a list with one name crossed off it.