Marked for Dinis Lopes
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The dugout10 Apr 2028
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Squad10 Apr 2028
Marin Orlinov 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.
Squad10 Apr 2028
Aleksandar Buchkov 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.
The dugout10 Apr 2028
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.
The dugout10 Apr 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Dinis Lopes, and the manager let it.
The dugout10 Apr 2028
Tamimou Ouorou knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Tamimou Ouorou trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market10 Apr 2028
The name of Martin Petkov keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Botev Vratsa say nothing, which says plenty.
Market10 Apr 2028
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Squad10 Apr 2028
The table has started to be checked before the results are in, and that is always the tell. Nobody at Botev Vratsa says the word out loud, and everybody in the building is thinking it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market17 May 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Lyuboslav Stoyanov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Botev Vratsa the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad17 May 2027
Petar Zovko and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout17 May 2027
“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.
Squad17 May 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Dinis Lopes commits to Botev Vratsa for another 3 years.
Squad17 May 2027
Đorđe Jovičić 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.
The dugout17 May 2027
Antoan Stoyanov has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Botev Vratsa 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.
Market17 May 2027
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Kassim Hadji’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
The dugout17 May 2027
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 Antoan Stoyanov has written the date down.
Squad17 May 2027
Questions about Marko Miletić on the training pitch
The standards have slipped, and in a building where everybody watches everybody it has not gone unremarked. This is how a player loses a place before he loses one.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market22 Feb 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Lyuboslav Stoyanov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Botev Vratsa the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Boardroom22 Feb 2027
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Daniel Genov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Daniel Genov, and the manager let it.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Words at Botev Vratsa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Martin Stoychev 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.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
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 Antoan Stoyanov is on it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The dugout18 Jan 2027
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Squad18 Jan 2027
Daniel Genov 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.
Match16 Jan 2027
3 matches without a goal for Botev Vratsa
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Martin Stoychev 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.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
The team sheet said everything about Mitchy Ntelo
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Mitchy Ntelo.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
Olympiacos have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
Eintracht Frankfurt have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Market18 Jan 2027
He is 20, and nobody at Botev Vratsa signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.