Position 3, 30 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Šimon Faško will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Podbrezova the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Matúš Rusnák 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 Martin Chrien was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
8 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Podbrezova, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at Podbrezova 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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Podbrezova are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Podbrezova have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Podbrezova have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Everything agreed with Beerschot, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Words at Podbrezova training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Martin Chrien 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.
Filip Kalanin 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.
Nobody at Podbrezova 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.
The offer from FC Košice for Filip Mielke 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Cracovia have kept their man, and Podbrezova go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Add another name to the list: Púchov have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Maksym Khiminets. The answer from Podbrezova has not changed — yet.
Mohammed Marzuq Yahaya 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.
Filip Kalanin is 17, and Podbrezova have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
5 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.
3 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
The offer from Šamorín for Radek Šiler 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Podbrezova can pretend not to have heard.
The deal with Dinamo Moscow is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podbrezova this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Pedro Pereira has, at Podbrezova, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
In brief
MatchAfter 4 games, Podbrezova finally taste it again
7.81, 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.
Peter Kováčik 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 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑0, Jakub Bero could afford to be generous.
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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Podbrezova have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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.
Nobody at Podbrezova 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.
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.
7 goals in 11 games at Púchov — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Podbrezova updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Luka Silagadze signs something — a contract at Podbrezova or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Podbrezova have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Peter Kováčik 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.
Half the programme played, position 9, 12 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andriy Havrylenko was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Radek Šiler 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Podbrezova can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
8 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Jakub Bero, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Podbrezova close the window on a squad of their own making
17 in and 4 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
The offer from Foolad for Ousman Kujabi 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Slavia Prague have kept their man, and Podbrezova go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Peter Kováčik and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad7 Sep 2026
8 new faces, and Podbrezova are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
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.
Nobody at Podbrezova 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.
He used to be one of the options. He is now one of the men the options are picked around, and the change happened quietly enough that only the dressing room noticed on the day.