Tai Žnuderl and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Words at Rudar Velenje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dejan Kuzmanović 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Tilen Rajter Krebs trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Rudar Velenje would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Rudar Velenje can pretend not to have heard.
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Klemen Mlakar 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 loan enquiry to Rudes: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Luka Balkovec kept it short after the 2‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Anas Ibrahimović is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dejan Kuzmanović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Sabur Ali did not need any: 7.65, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Rudar Velenje may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Rudar Velenje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Klemen Mlakar 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 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 board was up, the win was priced in, and then NK Krsko scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
Squad5 Oct 2026
14 new faces, and Rudar Velenje 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.
Elmir Avdić 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.
5 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Olimpija Ljubljana paid $64.0K and Rudar Velenje took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Rudar Velenje asked and Athens Kallithea said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lejs Pličanić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.