Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Ilirija 1911 will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The terraces4 Oct 2027
Supporters organise against the Ilirija 1911 board
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
9 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.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Ilirija 1911 is running low.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Ilirija 1911 is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Ilirija 1911 have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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.
Kimi Adamič 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.
Matevž Vrabec 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.
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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Ilirija 1911, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Supporters organise against the Ilirija 1911 board
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Position 16 and 14 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
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.
Boardroom22 Feb 2027
163% of the income goes out in wages at Ilirija 1911
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.
Both clubs in the mire, one fixture between them, and a ground that will be louder and more frightened than at any point in the season. Ilirija 1911 know what is at stake and so does everybody in the away end.