Jort van der Sande 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at Bali United training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mirza Mustafić 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.
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.
Diego Campos 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.
Nobody at Bali United 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bali United know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
A window away with the national side, and a shirt at Bali United that briefly doubles as an advertisement. A call-up flatters the player and the club that built him in the same breath.
In brief
The dugoutYusuf Meilana asks for a word with the manager
116% of the income goes out in wages at Bali United
Every club in football 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 somebody has tried it.
Nobody at Bali United 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.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Jens Raven has moved up it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Bali United. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
He looks like a man who lives here now rather than one who is working here. It took most of a season, and at Bali United the difference is visible from the back of the stand.
A programme of his own, away from the group, aimed at one thing the staff think is holding him back. Most improvement happens like this and none of it makes the paper.
“Judge me on him.” Managers do not say that kind of thing by accident — it moves the pressure from Ricky Fajrin’s shoulders onto his own, and both of them know it.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 35 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Bali United is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mirza Mustafić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Bali United 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
The division's best last weekend was a Bali United man
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Thomas Lam was the best thing in any of them.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Diego Campos signs something — a contract at Bali United or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bali United can pretend not to have heard.
Two goals and a mark of 8.11 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Jort van der Sande 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. 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 dugout28 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Septian Supriadi, on a 3‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Bali United training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Agus Mahendra 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.