Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Antonio Azinović 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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Solin will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Krešimir Nazor has written the date down.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Solin, another week without a signature from Rodrigo Abreu.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Dino Godec did not need any: 7.79, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Solin this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 33 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
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.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
$560.0K on the table at Lokomotiva Zagreb. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Stanislav Sytnyk will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Solin the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Solin this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Petar Mišković is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Everybody at Solin saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 35 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Petar Šimunić 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.
Argus Vanden Driessche 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.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Josip Čikvar trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Solin will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Solin they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Antonio Azinović 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. BSK Bijelo Brdo have kept their man, and Solin go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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.
In brief
The dugoutThe team sheet said everything about Josip Čikvar
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Solin will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Antonio Azinović 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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout28 Dec 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 0‑2 Filip Bilic left the room before anybody could ask which.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Solin they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Robert Ćosić 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Antonio Azinović 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Solin told Noa Mikić something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
22 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.
Radnik Krizevci next, and one man in the Solin dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.