Marked for Ilias Splinter
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom4 Feb 2030
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Market4 Feb 2030
“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.
Squad4 Feb 2030
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad4 Feb 2030
Tempers go at Vaduz
Uran Bislimi 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.
Squad4 Feb 2030
142 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad4 Feb 2030
The manager makes an example of Denis Simani
“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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Jan 2030
Tempers go at Vaduz
Uran Bislimi 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.
Squad21 Jan 2030
The medical room confirms 14 days on the sidelines for Roman Dixon, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Squad21 Jan 2030
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Ilias Splinter and Vaduz agree another 3 years.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match1 Sep 2029
10 matches without a win for Vaduz
The run now stands at 10, and the questions being asked around Vaduz are no longer polite ones.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Tempers go at Vaduz
Uran Bislimi 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.
Squad3 Sep 2029
The manager makes an example of Luca Mack
“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.
Match1 Sep 2029
A bad afternoon for Vaduz against Zurich
0‑1 to Zurich, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad3 Sep 2029
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Joe Boggan commits to Vaduz for another 4 years.
Player ratings3 Sep 2029
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings3 Sep 2029
5.52 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.
Market3 Sep 2029
Roman Dixon linked with a move away
The name of Roman Dixon keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Vaduz say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
Fabian Kobel has until the next board meeting
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Vaduz can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
Pressure builds in the Vaduz boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Squad5 Feb 2029
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Vaduz may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad5 Feb 2029
Uran Bislimi in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vaduz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Feb 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Antonio Verinac, and the manager let it.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
$2.7M taken back off the Vaduz table
What was available in the summer has quietly gone. Upstairs nobody will call it a change of ambition; downstairs nobody will call it anything else.