28 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rudes lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Rudes can pretend not to have heard.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Anthony Pavlešić is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Jurica Poldrugač 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.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Vedran Celjak 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.
56 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rudes lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 The request is on a desk at Rudes, and it is not being withdrawn.
The terraces26 Jul 2027
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 10 of the 32 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Rudes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Marcelo Barisic has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Luka Knezevic has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Sime Modric is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rudes lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Jurica Poldrugač 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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Vedran Celjak 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.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Karlo Kralj: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Claudiu Mihaila 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vedran Celjak 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 Rudes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 20. 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
Ivan Đorić 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.