“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at NK Krsko, and it is not being withdrawn.
Niki Radovič 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Jure Zupan 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 is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. NK Krsko told Fran Penezić something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
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.
“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.
NK Krka next, and one man in the NK Krsko dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
In brief
The dugoutJure Zupan asks for a word with the manager
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Gabriel Bačan did not need any: 8.23, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
6 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Jesenice were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
It finished 3‑1, and it was Gabriel Bačan’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to NK Krsko.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at NK Krsko training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kobi Bajc 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at NK Krsko this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 22 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.
In brief
The terracesNK Krsko's travelling support get something back at Jesenice
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at NK Krsko 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 Kobi Bajc was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 37, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. NK Krsko told Gašper Vodeb something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
11 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 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 Kobi Bajc is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jan Župančič trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. NK Krsko know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what NK Krsko can pretend not to have heard.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. NK Maribor have kept their man, and NK Krsko go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at NK Krsko training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Niki Radovič 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.
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.
Brinje Grosuplje are out and NK Krsko go through, 2‑1 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Kobi Bajc, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.68
A mark of 7.68 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.69 for the rest of it.
Niki Radovič 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.
Add another name to the list: Brinje Grosuplje have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Matic Kustrin. The answer from NK Krsko has not changed — yet.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. NK Celje have kept their man, and NK Krsko go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
He is 23 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jure Zupan was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
0‑3 to Bistrica, 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.
The deal with NK Celje 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.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Sven Opačić 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 approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at NK Krsko training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Niki Radovič 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.
11 combined actions and 6.80. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
1‑4 against Triglav Kranj, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Sven Opačić 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.
NK Krsko asked and Olimpija Ljubljana said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at NK Krsko training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jure Zupan 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.