The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Beroe people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Successful dribbles: 29. 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. José Mendes has just signed for Beroe, and for once the answer mattered.
Squads form friendships and that is healthy; this is not that. 5 separate groups, 4 players belonging to none of them, and a set of tables at lunch that have stopped rearranging themselves. It very rarely fixes itself.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Beroe this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ismael Ferrer was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Beroe, another week without a signature from Daniel Ivanov.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
7.67, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Level with 85 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Beroe had all but put away. Ludogorets will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Angel Stoyanov after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Nobody at Beroe 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Beroe can tell you which week it ends in.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ismael Ferrer 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.
The board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
“I watch every Beroe game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Septemvri runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Angel Stoyanov to a room that had heard them before.
Yesid Valbuena 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Caio Lopes was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Emir Kuhinja is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
“I watch every Beroe game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Septemvri runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Four or five weekends of consistency, measured against everybody else in the division. A quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Angel Stoyanov chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Montana defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.