He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Levski is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levski this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
A point taken on 88 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
Successful dribbles: 17. 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.
Svetoslav Vutsov 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.
“I watch every Levski game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Arda runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Nobody at Levski will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Álex Centelles signs something — a contract at Levski or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Levski, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nobody writes a headline about a tutor. Nobody has to be told, either, what happens to a signing who spends two years being the man nobody can talk to at lunch.
Sharpest man there all week, by every account. It is the quietest line on this page and it usually runs the week before somebody’s run in the side begins.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Christian Makoun wants continental football; whether Levski can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levski this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Words at Levski training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Makoun is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Marko Dugandžić is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Levski know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Marko Grujić and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Words at Levski training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Makoun is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Levski know it.