“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Persijap know it.
Nobody at Persijap 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.
Squad13 Dec 2027
Words at Persijap training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rendi Saepul 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Persijap are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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.
Squad11 Oct 2027
Rendi Saepul 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.
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.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against PSBS Biak in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persijap can pretend not to have heard.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.82 for the rest of it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Persijap this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Successful dribbles: 21. 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.
Persijap asked and Persija said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Persijap this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Xemxidin has, at Persijap, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
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.
Mamady Cissé 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Sagiv Atzili left the room before anybody could ask which.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Idan Vered’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Maccabi Petach Tikva needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Nobody at Maccabi Petach Tikva 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.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Yanir Zaigerman is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“I did not go to Hapoel Beer Sheva to sit and watch. I want to come back to Maccabi Petach Tikva and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 9 matches say the rest.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Maccabi Petach Tikva this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
9 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
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 Franck Rivollier is on it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Hapoel Kfar Saba in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Aviv Salem signs something — a contract at Maccabi Petach Tikva or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.60 for the rest of it.
The deal that would have taken Aviv Salem to Beitar Jerusalem has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Maccabi Petach Tikva with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Yanir Zaigerman is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mamady Cissé 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Flamengo have kept their man, and Maccabi Petach Tikva go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The board was up, the win was priced in, and then Hapoel Tel Aviv scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
“I watch every Maccabi Petach Tikva game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Hapoel Beer Sheva runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Maor Erlich 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 needed Okechukwu Azubuike to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Hapoel Tel Aviv, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.