Marked for Peter Kováčik
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad14 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sharani Zuberu
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Podbrezova lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match12 Dec 2026
Some goals win a match and some take one off somebody else. Filip Mielke scored in the 87th minute, Zlate Moravce had already begun thinking about the journey home, and Podbrezova took the lot.
Market14 Dec 2026
Melgar come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Podbrezova did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Filip Mielke, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.98
A mark of 8.98 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 27. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Sharani Zuberu 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.
The terraces14 Dec 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Filip Mielke has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Match12 Dec 2026
Zlate Moravce made Podbrezova work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad14 Dec 2026
12 clean sheets and counting. Strikers leave this ground muttering his name, which is exactly how a goalkeeper measures a good season.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Podbrezova training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matúš Marcin 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.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
7.35, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Podbrezova had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad14 Sep 2026
When it matters, Šimon Faško plays
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.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad14 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Davit Hakobyan
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market17 Aug 2026
$1.6M from Al-Nassr for Radek Šiler. Money is money, but the dressing room has lost the man it looked to.
Market17 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Podbrezova did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
Podbrezova sell a favourite for $1.6M
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Radek Šiler was one of the reasons people came, and $1.6M does not replace that by itself.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Ousman Kujabi, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.69
A mark of 7.69 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
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.
Market17 Aug 2026
MSK Zilina pay $130.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
At 20 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Peter Kováčik, and the manager let it.