Marked for Mateja Prokopijević
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Jul 2027
20 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. IMT lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Market19 Jul 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what IMT can pretend not to have heard.
Transfer targets19 Jul 2027
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Shakhtar is saying, and nobody at IMT is enjoying the guessing.
Squad19 Jul 2027
A falling-out at IMT
Josué Tiendrébéogo and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad19 Jul 2027
At 31 the improving is meant to be over, and it is not: 3 points better than a year ago. It happens to the ones who take the boring parts seriously.
Transfer targets19 Jul 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Debrecen have kept their man, and IMT go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The dugout19 Jul 2027
The manager makes an example of Charly Keita
“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.
Transfer targets19 Jul 2027
Volos NPS have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Squad19 Jul 2027
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Jul 2027
28 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. IMT lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad12 Jul 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at IMT this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Jul 2027
At 21 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.
Transfer targets12 Jul 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
The dugout12 Jul 2027
“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.
Squad12 Jul 2027
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation IMT are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Transfer targets12 Jul 2027
A loan enquiry to Shakhtar: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Market12 Jul 2027
He is 20, and nobody at IMT signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Market12 Jul 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Vicky Kiankaulua has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at IMT.
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout22 Feb 2027
Matija Marsenić: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Cukaricki have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Boardroom22 Feb 2027
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Mateja Prokopijević has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Words exchanged at Cukaricki
Žarko Udovičić 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.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
The manager makes an example of Joshua Enaholo
“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.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Veljko Radosavljević 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.
Squad22 Feb 2027
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
Market22 Feb 2027
He is 18, and nobody at Cukaricki signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
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.
Squad22 Feb 2027
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Cukaricki are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.