16 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Varteks can tell you which week it ends in.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Josip Mijatović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
23 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.
32 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Varteks lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 13 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Slaven Belupo 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 Varteks this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Words at Varteks training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Josip Mijatović 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.
Varteks ran out of time with Slaven Belupo. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
5 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.
“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; Varteks are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Successful dribbles: 22. 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 Varteks 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 Josip Mijatović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Varteks this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 15. 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.
Cibalia 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.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Bojan Petkov kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Grobnican next, and one man in the Varteks dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
It had gone 11 games. The players did not celebrate like men who had won a match; they celebrated like men who had been let out of something.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Aldiouma Diallo, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.61
A mark of 7.61 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Caio Cruz. 2‑1 against Radnik Krizevci, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
At 23 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Bojan Petkov on a 2‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Varteks have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Position 16 and 3 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Varteks can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.