The end came on a Tuesday, as these things usually do: a short meeting, a shorter statement, and Sergio Raimondi clearing his office by noon. Football’s cruellest ritual, performed to schedule.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
The coaching staff has emptied out entirely and there was nobody internal to promote, so the club has appointed a name almost none of its supporters will recognise. Clubs recover from this; none of them enjoy explaining it.
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
“Somebody picks the team on Saturday. This week it is me, and that is as far as I have thought.” No promises were made in either direction, which is how these usually begin.
Nothing resets a career like somebody arriving who did not pick the side last season. Oumar Solet has taken the hint, and Udinese are getting a version of him the previous regime had stopped seeing.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Udinese, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Genoa have kept their man, and Udinese go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Udinese can pretend not to have heard.
$890.0K on the table at Hellas Verona. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Add another name to the list: Catanzaro have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Simone Pafundi. The answer from Udinese has not changed — yet.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Idrissa Guèye has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Unai Gómez 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 injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 16 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
“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; Udinese are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Udinese, another week without a signature from Saba Goglichidze.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Samuele Mulattieri trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 Alessandro Zanoli is on it.
Jakoslav Stanković 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 Feb 2028
Isaac Matondo 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 Jordi Govea signs something — a contract at Primorje or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
42 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Primorje lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Primorje can pretend not to have heard.
The deal with Radomlje 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.
David Pejičić 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Ludogorets have kept their man, and Primorje go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Primorje have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad24 Jan 2028
Žan Bešir 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 words a physio says slowly. 75 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Primorje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad27 Dec 2027
Words at Primorje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Isaac Matondo 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.
“I watch every Primorje game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at NK Celje runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Isaac Matondo signs something — a contract at Primorje or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The words a physio says slowly. 89 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.
Bogdan Mirčetić 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.
At 20 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 words a physio says slowly. 103 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.
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 watch every Primorje game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at NK Celje runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
The dugout29 Nov 2027
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.” Sandi Ilicic chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against NK Maribor.
112 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Primorje lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Jakoslav Stanković 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.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Žan Bešir 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 found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Primorje pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.