115 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Trnje lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Samuli Miettinen and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad10 May 2027
Branko Pavić 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 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 Ereiz is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Trnje know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
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.
Samuli Miettinen 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dino Šimunić 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
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 Božidar Radošević is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Trnje, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Trnje know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
6 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Trnje could ask drops and the wages Marko Zubaj can ask rise.
Zvonko Pamić 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Branko Pavić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Trnje, another week without a signature from Dražen Pilčić.
Nobody at Trnje will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Zvonko Pamić trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Trnje has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
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.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $16.1K — a club that wants Nikola Radnić enough to be asked twice.
Zvonko Pamić 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.
$15.0K was the most the club would pay and Dinamo Zagreb 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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to David Katić, and the manager let it.
Squad31 Aug 2026
20 new faces, and Trnje are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“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.
In brief
Transfer targetsA loan move for Samuli Miettinen is in the works