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.
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.
Nothing is announced when this happens and everybody knows. He is a bigger part of the plan at Sigma Olomouc than he was a month ago, and the training ground worked that out before the team sheet said so.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sigma Olomouc this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Abdoulaye Sylla was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sigma Olomouc know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
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.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Sigma Olomouc. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
A brace, and Václav Sejk takes the afternoon — 9.23
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Václav Sejk provided it, and the 9.23 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Sigma Olomouc will try again when the window opens; Zbrojovka Brno may not be selling by then.
Fabijan Krivak 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Filip Slavíček 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.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Martin Sima, on a 3‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and František Matys was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
$1.8M on the table at Zbrojovka Brno. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 7 arrived, 2 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Moses Nyebe has just signed for Sigma Olomouc, and for once the answer mattered.
Fabijan Krivak 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.
Marked 8.36 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 95. Mlada Boleslav had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
Successful dribbles: 17. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.