The Cibalia Chronicle
Squad7 Aug 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Petar Brlek
124 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cibalia lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match5 Aug 2028
9 matches without a win for Cibalia
The run now stands at 9, and the questions being asked around Cibalia are no longer polite ones.
Market7 Aug 2028
Terms done: Darijo Petkov is going
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Hrvace waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Cibalia is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market7 Aug 2028
Petar Brlek hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Cibalia can pretend not to have heard.
Transfer targets7 Aug 2028
Ivan Ćubelić will not be coming to Cibalia
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at HNK Rijeka is saying, and nobody at Cibalia is enjoying the guessing.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Words exchanged at Cibalia
Bernardo Matić 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.
Match5 Aug 2028
The goals have deserted Cibalia
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Cibalia can tell you which week it ends in.
Transfer targets7 Aug 2028
Cibalia rebuffed over Amer Gojak
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. HNK Rijeka have kept their man, and Cibalia go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Words at Cibalia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Filip Mekić 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.
In brief
- The dugout Marin Kuzminski gets it from the manager
- Squad Leon Elliott wants to go home
- Player ratings The afternoon belonged to Britto