Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Jan Paluska 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Málaga have kept their man, and Mlada Boleslav go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Successful dribbles: 17. 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.
“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; Mlada Boleslav are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Ales Stanek after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
That is the business done at Mlada Boleslav until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Ondřej Karafiát 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. CSKA Moscow have kept their man, and Mlada Boleslav go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Minute 92, against Sparta Prague, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.
Dinamo Moscow 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.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Denis Donát
24 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Mlada Boleslav lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
There were 89 minutes on the clock and Zlin had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Mlada Boleslav did not stop to explain themselves.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
A brace, and Lukáš Letenay takes the afternoon — 8.77
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Lukáš Letenay provided it, and the 8.77 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Ondřej Karafiát 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 a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
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.
Zlin made Mlada Boleslav work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Match26 Dec 2026
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for Mlada Boleslav. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
Successful dribbles: 19. 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mlada Boleslav this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 20 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.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Denis Donát was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Martin Králik trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.