A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Mladost Lucani will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
10 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Mladost Lucani had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at PSV, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Nikola Boranijašević 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 phone has started ringing about Sergej Nastasic again, and this time the name on the line is SKA Khabarovsk. Mladost Lucani are listening politely and promising nothing.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Aleksandar Varjačić and Mladost Lucani agree another 2 years.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: CSKA Moscow keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
At 15 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mladost Lucani this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Mladost Lucani asked and CSKA Moscow said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Bogdan Matijašević and Mladost Lucani agree another 4 years.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Mladost Lucani. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
The dugoutFilip Žunić knocks on the manager’s door
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: CSKA Moscow keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mladost Lucani this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The chase for Lazar Radojičić ended with $100.0K changing hands and Radnik Surdulica out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
$140.0K was the most the club would pay and Vojvodina were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Partizan paid $37.0K and Mladost Lucani took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Branislav Nastasic has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Nikola Boranijašević 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.
Add another name to the list: Napredak have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Jovan Ćirić. The answer from Mladost Lucani has not changed — yet.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Mladost Lucani, another week without a signature from Beryly Lubala.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mladost Lucani this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Petar Đukanović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Mladost Lucani, and both men came out saying it was fine.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Petar Bojić signs something — a contract at Mladost Lucani or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
6 clean sheets from 29 appearances at Novi Pazar. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Mladost Lucani will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Nikola Boranijašević has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
Vukašin Jovanović 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 deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 19 arrived, 4 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Nemanja Petrović reports back to Mladost Lucani with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mladost Lucani this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Flamengo have kept their man, and Mladost Lucani go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The young player of the month award goes to a 19-year-old at Mladost Lucani who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Branislav Nastasic left the room before anybody could ask which.
In brief
SquadA place in the month's best eleven for Jovan Ćirić
The dugoutBeryly Lubala knocks on the manager’s door
Vukašin Jovanović 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. TSG Hoffenheim have kept their man, and Mladost Lucani go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Partizan waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Mladost Lucani is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
A brace, and Jovan Ćirić takes the afternoon — 8.31
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Jovan Ćirić provided it, and the 8.31 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
At 19 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.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 94. OFK Beograd had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Jovan Ćirić, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.88
A mark of 7.88 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Vukašin Jovanović 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.
Mladost Lucani asked and Shakhtar said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Dejan Sergej has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Branislav Petrovic is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.