It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bistrica this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
This is not rotation. Matic Kopač has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Bistrica is pretending otherwise.
Squad30 Apr 2029
Words at Bistrica training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Črt Rotar 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.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Bistrica will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
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
BoardroomThe Bistrica production line keeps running
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bistrica they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Vid Šumenjak 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.
This is not rotation. Nik Pirc has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Bistrica is pretending otherwise.
Squad9 Apr 2029
Words at Bistrica training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Črt Rotar 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.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $14.5M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Bistrica can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Ajdin Dergić trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The dugout9 Apr 2029
Lluc Carrera is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
This is not rotation. Ajdin Dergić has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Bistrica is pretending otherwise.
Squad19 Mar 2029
Črt Rotar 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Ajdin Husić 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Črt Rotar signs something — a contract at Bistrica or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
48 points from position 6. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
This is not rotation. Nik Pirc has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Bistrica is pretending otherwise.
Squad12 Mar 2029
Črt Rotar 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.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $14.5M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
Lluc Carrera 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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Jakub Exner is living that version at Bistrica, and it tends to show in the first month.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. NK Maribor have kept their man, and Bistrica go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Žan Baskera was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Bistrica are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.