Successful dribbles: 27. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Sabur Ali and Rudar Velenje agree another 5 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Rudar Velenje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lejs Pličanić 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 21 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.
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Tilen Rajter Krebs 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Rudar Velenje will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Marked 7.82 at 21, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Rudar Velenje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lejs Pličanić 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.
Ante Kozina 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 21 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.
Defensive actions: 16. He was first to everything and second to nothing, and the goalkeeper had an easy day because of it.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
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.” Filip Birsa kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
30 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rudar Velenje lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Rudar Velenje will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
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.
Tilen Rajter Krebs 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 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 Tomislav Knežević is on it.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Gal Gorenak’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Rudar Velenje needing him to play as if none of it matters.
14 points from position 5. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Nemanja Studen is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
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.” Filip Birsa chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
“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 Rudar Velenje will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
Successful dribbles: 25. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Rudar Velenje had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Dinamo Zagreb, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
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.
Tilen Rajter Krebs 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.
Rudar Velenje have made the call to Olimpija Ljubljana. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.