Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Auckland FC they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Auckland FC are no longer polite ones.
Squad29 Nov 2027
Words at Auckland FC training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Louis Verstraete 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Harrison Davis after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Max Vartuli 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 at Auckland FC is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Michael Woud trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Guillermo May signs something — a contract at Auckland FC or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Guillermo May 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Guillermo May signs something — a contract at Auckland FC or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Auckland FC. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
SquadMichael Woud has seen what the next man earns
“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 Adelaide United know it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Adelaide United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Panagiotis Kikianis 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.
Add another name to the list: Melbourne Victory have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Jacob Brazete. The answer from Adelaide United has not changed — yet.
“I watch every Adelaide United game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Brisbane Roar runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Nobody at Adelaide United 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 clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Auckland FC is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Hiroki Sakai 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 paperwork is done: Max Vartuli joins from Adelaide United in a deal worth $70.0K. Now comes the harder part.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Michael Woud 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.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Auckland FC will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
$680.0K was the most the club would pay and Central Coast Mariners were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Joel Anasmo 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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Auckland FC will make the call about Max Vartuli this week. Adelaide United have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
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 Craig Goodwin is on it.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Jacob Brazete 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.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Mpho Khethang has written the date down.
A programme of his own, away from the group, aimed at one thing the staff think is holding him back. Most improvement happens like this and none of it makes the paper.
40 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Transfer targets2 Aug 2027
$70.0K settles it between the clubs for Max Vartuli
Adelaide United have accepted the money. What Auckland FC do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Luka Vicelich has left for Melbourne Victory in a $97.0K deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Guillermo May 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Catania have kept their man, and Auckland FC go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Sebastian Despotovski 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 demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Oscar Fryer is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Auckland FC, another week without a signature from Marlon van de Wetering.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 18 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Adelaide United have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Panagiotis Kikianis 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.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Adelaide United, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 46 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Adelaide United will quote 15 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Israel Monga and Adelaide United agree another 3 years.
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.
In brief
The dugoutEthan Alagich knocks on the manager’s door
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Adelaide United will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Dylan Pierias 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.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 133 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Ajak Riak 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 had been thinking. Joshua Smits 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 Dylan Pierias is on it.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Max Vartuli has his answer from Adelaide United; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Two goals and a mark of 8.46 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Craig Goodwin and Adelaide United agree another 2 years.
“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 Adelaide United know it.
Joshua Smits 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.
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.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Adelaide United pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Blake Collins on a 3‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Adelaide United are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Every long career reaches the week the last one is thought about. He would like it to be where he started, and Adelaide United know now that the thought has arrived.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ajak Riak was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Adelaide United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
0‑3 to Brisbane Roar, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Deadline passes with 2 signed and 2 gone
That is the business done at Adelaide United 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Adelaide United can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Mpho Khethang has, at Adelaide United, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Adelaide United asked and Auckland FC said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“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 Adelaide United, and 0 appearances in 25 say he has earned the hearing.
0‑3 against Melbourne City, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
4 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Adelaide United can tell you which week it ends in.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Adelaide United asked and Auckland FC said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“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 Adelaide United, and 0 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Panagiotis Kikianis 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 supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Panagiotis Kikianis has come out of that comparison in the side, and Adelaide United have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
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 Anselmo is on it.
Daniel Wilmering 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Lachlan Rose 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Nikos Vergos’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Newcastle Jets needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Alex Nassiep trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Panagiotis Kikianis did not need any: 7.94, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
At 21 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.
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.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Juan Muñiz had Adelaide United level again within 3 minutes, and Brisbane Roar never got to play with a lead at all.
“I watch every Adelaide United game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Newcastle Jets runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 2‑2 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
Daniel Wilmering and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Lachlan Rose 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.
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
The dugout9 Nov 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.” Tyler Hamilton chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
Panagiotis Kikianis 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.
“I watch every Adelaide United game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Newcastle Jets runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Daniel Wilmering 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Lachlan Rose 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.
22 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.
In brief
The dugoutZach Clough knocks on the manager’s door
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Panagiotis Kikianis was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I watch every Adelaide United game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Newcastle Jets runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Ethan Cox signs something — a contract at Adelaide United or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Joshua Smits and Adelaide United agree another 2 years.
“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 Adelaide United know it.
Every long career reaches the week the player starts thinking about the last one. He would like it to be at the club that first put him on a pitch, and Adelaide United now know that too.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Kashima Antlers have kept their man, and Adelaide United go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The name of Max Vartuli has come up in conversations Adelaide United were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Newcastle Jets have gone to Barnsley with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Newcastle Jets this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Newcastle Jets training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lachlan Rose 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.
Still no offer on the table, and Alex Grant’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
20 new faces, and Newcastle Jets 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.