Marked for João Pedro
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market24 Jul 2028
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Gareji Sagarejo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market24 Jul 2028
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Transfer targets24 Jul 2028
$50.0K on the table at Lokomotivi. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Words at Gareji Sagarejo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Anri Chichinadze 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.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Dudu wants to go home
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Gareji Sagarejo know it.
Squad24 Jul 2028
31 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Eldar Parkinashvili 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.
Loan watch24 Jul 2028
10 shut-outs in 13 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Giorgi Bediashvili has been having a lot of them.
Transfer targets24 Jul 2028
A loan enquiry to Vila Nova: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market17 Jul 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market17 Jul 2028
The bid was some way short and Gareji Sagarejo did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Transfer targets17 Jul 2028
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Lokomotivi have kept their man, and Gareji Sagarejo go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Riquelmo 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.
Market17 Jul 2028
The name of João Pedro has come up in conversations Gareji Sagarejo were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Calazans 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.
Transfer targets17 Jul 2028
Gareji Sagarejo have made the call to Torpedo Kutaisi. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Transfer targets17 Jul 2028
Dinamo Batumi 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.
Squad17 Jul 2028
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Shota Shengelia commits to Gareji Sagarejo for another 3 years.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 Jan 2028
A fracture rules Tom van den Bos out for 93 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Gareji Sagarejo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market31 Jan 2028
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Gareji Sagarejo have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Market31 Jan 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Transfer targets31 Jan 2028
Gareji Sagarejo have gone to Spaeri with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Squad31 Jan 2028
17 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Transfer targets31 Jan 2028
Gareji Sagarejo asked and Telavi said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Davit Paghava 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.
Market31 Jan 2028
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Guga Palavandishvili has his answer from Gareji Sagarejo; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Squad31 Jan 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gareji Sagarejo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market10 Jan 2028
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Gareji Sagarejo people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Market10 Jan 2028
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Gareji Sagarejo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad10 Jan 2028
“The easiest signature of my career.” Luka Kapianidze and Gareji Sagarejo agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Transfer targets10 Jan 2028
Gareji Sagarejo have gone to Lokomotivi with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Transfer targets10 Jan 2028
Gareji Sagarejo asked and Dinamo Tbilisi said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Words at Gareji Sagarejo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Davit Samurkasovi 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.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Guga Palavandishvili 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.
Squad10 Jan 2028
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Gareji Sagarejo know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Market10 Jan 2028
João Pedro is free to find somewhere else
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Gareji Sagarejo has been clear about where João Pedro stands, which is more than many ever get.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad18 Jan 2027
Rodrigo Negueba gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Rodrigo Negueba has just signed for Gareji Sagarejo, and for once the answer mattered.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
The deal with Samtredia is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Squad18 Jan 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 Gareji Sagarejo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
$50.0K was the most the club would pay and Lokomotivi 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.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lulinha was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Dila have kept their man, and Gareji Sagarejo go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
A loan enquiry to Fluminense: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Squad18 Jan 2027
No place for João Pedro in the new shape
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Gareji Sagarejo are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Market18 Jan 2027
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 Jan 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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
João Pedro arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. João Pedro has, at Gareji Sagarejo, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Squad11 Jan 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 Gareji Sagarejo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
$50.0K on the table at Lokomotivi. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad11 Jan 2027
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 35 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
Gareji Sagarejo asked and Sioni said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.