Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason TSC will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at TSC is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stefan Vidaković 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; TSC are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. TSC know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” TSC have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around TSC they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Stefan Vidaković 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.
9 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about TSC and Grafičar in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
A brace, and Marcelo Cauã takes the afternoon — 8.21
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Marcelo Cauã provided it, and the 8.21 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stefan Vidaković 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.
Slobodan Sladojević 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Marcelo Cauã. 2‑0 against Voždovac, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
In brief
Player ratingsFrederik Elkær did the work nobody counts — 7.40
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” TSC have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Tolgahan Sahin has just signed for TSC, and for once the answer mattered.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Prestige Mboungou was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation TSC are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mihajlo Milosavić 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.
Nobody at TSC 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.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Crvena Zvezda in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
6 shut-outs in 15 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Dominik Stöger has been having a lot of them.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around TSC they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Stefan Vidaković 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.
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 1‑0 win over Spartak Subotica, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings9 Oct 2034
Marcelo Cauã was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.00. 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Interim Coach on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Nobody at TSC 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.