The words a physio says slowly. 18 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Two goals and a mark of 8.83 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The medical room confirms 23 days on the sidelines for Roman Holiš, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Jan Sedlák 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.
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.
The words a physio says slowly. 141 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Táborsko they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Táborsko this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Apr 2028
Asen Mitkov 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Táborsko can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
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 clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: České Budějovice keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Dominik Špiriak has agreed terms with Opava for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Lukáš Matějka 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.
4 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
Squad21 Feb 2028
Jan Sedlák 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Tyrese Omotoye. 2‑1 against Banik Ostrava B, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 38 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Lukáš Matějka 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Matěj Radosta. 2‑1 against Pribram, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
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.
A mark of 7.77, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Tomáš Polyák 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 dugout27 Sep 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Lukáš Matějka's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Stanislav Barak on a 2‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Táborsko this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Táborsko offered $46.0K; Zbrojovka Brno said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Táborsko have made the call to Slovan Liberec. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Squad21 Jun 2027
5 new faces, and Táborsko 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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Táborsko will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
David Šimek 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.
A loan enquiry to České Budějovice: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Nobody at Táborsko 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Matěj Radosta signs something — a contract at Táborsko or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The registration window is open and the phone has started. Between now and the deadline this club will be linked with forty players and sign three, which is the usual ratio.
Position 6, 43 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.