The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Partizani Tirana people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“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 The request is on a desk at Partizani Tirana, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Elson Himallari will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Partizani Tirana the goodbyes have quietly begun.
David Atanaskoski 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Dinamo City have kept their man, and Partizani Tirana go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say David Atanaskoski is on it.
Position 4, 27 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Partizani Tirana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The name of Odisea Gjati has come up in conversations Partizani Tirana were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Partizani Tirana, and it is not being withdrawn.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Partizani Tirana have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The clubs have shaken hands with Dinamo City; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
David Atanaskoski 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say David Atanaskoski is on it.
27 points from position 4. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
A manager forgives a bad Saturday far more readily than a bad Tuesday, because one of them he can explain and the other one he chose. The reports this week have not been good.
In brief
SquadAlbion Marku is training like a man with a point to make
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Partizani Tirana scored in the 96th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Two goals and a mark of 9.45 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 31 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Luftëtari waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Partizani Tirana is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“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 Partizani Tirana, and it is not being withdrawn.
David Atanaskoski 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.
A 1‑0 win over AF Elbasani, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Elson Himallari, 17, plays like he has been here for years — 8.28
A mark of 8.28 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 17-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rowan Human 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.
Arafat Doumbia 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 17-year-old it feels ownership of. Elson Himallari has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
The dugout28 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 1‑3 Gerald Ara left the room before anybody could ask which.