Marked for Duje Matić
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 45. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“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; Hajduk Split are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Hugo Guillamón 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Ante Rebić 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.
Loan watch12 Oct 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Hajduk Split, and 2 appearances in 6 say he has earned the hearing.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.50 on the card, and the Hajduk Split support went home talking about one name.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad28 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dugopolje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Dimitris Pelkas 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.
Match26 Sep 2026
Zadar left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match7 Sep 2026
Dugopolje are in among the leaders
Position 2 and 14 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Nobody could get near Ivan Delić
Successful dribbles: 30. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match5 Sep 2026
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 7 matches without defeat is a foundation Dugopolje did not have in the autumn.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Dugopolje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dimitris Pelkas 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.
Match5 Sep 2026
A 1‑0 win over Hrvatski Dragovoljac, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
A performance of 8.18 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Gabriel Melo gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Duje Matić 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
10 new faces, and Dugopolje 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market31 Aug 2026
Špiro Peričić 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 Dugopolje can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Ivan Delić runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad31 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dugopolje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match29 Aug 2026
Whatever happens, Dugopolje do not lose
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Zoran Nižić 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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
A performance of 8.32 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad31 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Mijo Caktaš
“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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Stef Nijland dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Match29 Aug 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market17 Aug 2026
Hajduk Split spend $5.1M to raise the standard
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $5.1M has been paid because Jonatan Torres is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
Market17 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad17 Aug 2026
A move Mario Mladenovski would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Mario Mladenovski is living that version at Hajduk Split, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Hugo Guillamón 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.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
Hajduk Split spend $5.1M on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $5.1M for Jonatan Torres, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Match15 Aug 2026
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Market17 Aug 2026
Istra 1961 are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Hajduk Split will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.