“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 The request is on a desk at Mezőkövesd, and it is not being withdrawn.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 34 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Márk Kristóf will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Mezőkövesd the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Barnabás Simon 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.
Squad30 Apr 2029
Mees Kreekels 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 done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Mezőkövesd will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Mezőkövesd, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Márk Kristóf will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Mezőkövesd the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Zsombor Bévárdi commits to Mezőkövesd for another 3 years.
Squad2 Apr 2029
Words at Mezőkövesd training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dominik Csontos 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.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Dominik Csontos has come out of that comparison in the side, and Mezőkövesd have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
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.
In brief
The dugoutLovro Dukić asks for a word with the manager
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Mezőkövesd will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Mezőkövesd 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 Mezőkövesd this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Mar 2029
Words at Mezőkövesd training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mees Kreekels 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.
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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Mezőkövesd they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
Deadline passes with 4 signed and 1 gone
That is the business done at Mezőkövesd until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mees Kreekels was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Mezőkövesd they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Nicolò Spinelli has agreed terms with Vasas for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Matheis Piskor is living that version at Mezőkövesd, and it tends to show in the first month.
A performance of 8.31 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad8 Jan 2029
Lovro Dukić 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.
Igor Petrović 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.
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.
A performance of 8.31 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings27 Nov 2028
Zsombor Bévárdi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.31. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Oleksandr Kozak was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Igor Petrović and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Words at Mezőkövesd training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mees Kreekels 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.
At 34, 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.
Nobody at Mezőkövesd 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Márk Kristóf’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Mezőkövesd needing him to play as if none of it matters.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Mees Kreekels 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.
Márk Kristóf 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.
7.63, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Mezőkövesd had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad13 Nov 2028
6 new faces, and Mezőkövesd 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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Akos Dibusz after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Igor Petrović and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Mees Kreekels 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.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout25 Sep 2028
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Akos Dibusz left the room before anybody could ask which.
Nobody at Mezőkövesd 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.
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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Zsombor Bévárdi is living that version at Mezőkövesd, and it tends to show in the first month.
Bamidele Yusuf 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Mees Kreekels was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Mezőkövesd, another week without a signature from Csaba Szatmári.
Paksi next, and one man in the Mezőkövesd dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Nobody at Mezőkövesd 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Mezőkövesd will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Igor Petrović 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.
Squad22 May 2028
Words at Mezőkövesd training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Erik Kusnyír 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.
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 Matúš Sláviček is on it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Ádám Pintér signs something — a contract at Mezőkövesd or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Lajos Bertus trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.