The deal with Mlada Boleslav 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Opatija this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The offer went to Dubrava this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Opatija asked and Lokomotiva Zagreb said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nikola Rodin was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
7 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Josip Zeljković trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
28 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Opatija lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Opatija this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Luka Hrvojević is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Opatija, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer from Zabbar St. Patrick for Goodness Ajayi was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Opatija have done the hard part with Hajduk Split, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Opatija had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Hajduk Split, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Dino Kapitanović 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 version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Luka Hrvojević is living that version at Opatija, and it tends to show in the first month.