Marked for Vincenzo Testa
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad15 Sep 2036
There were 9 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings15 Sep 2036
Allyson, 35, rolls back the years — 8.91
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.91 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad15 Sep 2036
Daniel Kovac: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Hrvatski Dragovoljac have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad15 Sep 2036
Mateo Tomić 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.
Match13 Sep 2036
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings15 Sep 2036
Shots: 12. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Squad15 Sep 2036
6 goals and a season average of 7.21. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Player ratings15 Sep 2036
Shots: 10, not one of them in. A centre forward is paid for one thing, and on this evidence he has forgotten which thing it is.
Player ratings15 Sep 2036
Successful dribbles: 12. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Feb 2036
A knee injury of the worst kind for Matthew Pearson
80 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hrvatski Dragovoljac lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom4 Feb 2036
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Interim Coach has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Boardroom4 Feb 2036
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Boardroom4 Feb 2036
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Antonin Marsin has agreed terms with Zadar for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad4 Feb 2036
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hrvatski Dragovoljac this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad4 Feb 2036
Mateo Tomić 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.
Boardroom4 Feb 2036
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
Squad4 Feb 2036
22 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad19 Nov 2035
The match ball belongs to Agustín Benavidez, whose 3 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Market19 Nov 2035
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Hrvatski Dragovoljac can pretend not to have heard.
Squad19 Nov 2035
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Hrvatski Dragovoljac may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad19 Nov 2035
Allyson 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.
Player ratings19 Nov 2035
Agustín Benavidez was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.48. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Player ratings19 Nov 2035
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.24, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad19 Nov 2035
Words at Hrvatski Dragovoljac training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mateo Tomić 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.