Marked for Jovan Trač
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad8 Mar 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Crvena Zvezda may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad8 Mar 2027
26 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Marko Arnautović commits to Crvena Zvezda for another 2 years.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad1 Feb 2027
Strahinja Eraković damages knee ligaments — 25 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 25 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match30 Jan 2027
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation Crvena Zvezda did not have in the autumn.
Market1 Feb 2027
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad1 Feb 2027
5 goals and a season average of 7.39. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Mahmudu Bajo 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.
Loan watch1 Feb 2027
“I did not go to BATE to sit and watch. I want to come back to Crvena Zvezda and fight for my place.” 3 appearances in 21 matches say the rest.
Match30 Jan 2027
A 1‑1 draw with Partizan leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Jan 2027
62 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Crvena Zvezda lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 31. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad4 Jan 2027
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Crvena Zvezda have had the benefit of it.
Market4 Jan 2027
Add another name to the list: RC Lens have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Miloš Veljković. The answer from Crvena Zvezda has not changed — yet.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Age has not caught Rade Krunić yet — 7.87
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.87 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match2 Jan 2027
The run at home goes on for Crvena Zvezda
11 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Rade Krunić in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Crvena Zvezda this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.14, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Match2 Jan 2027
TSC made Crvena Zvezda work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Dec 2026
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 112 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jovan Trač is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at BATE training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Robert Berić 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match5 Dec 2026
Whatever happens, Crvena Zvezda do not lose
16 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 26. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match5 Dec 2026
4 matches without a win for Crvena Zvezda
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Crvena Zvezda are no longer polite ones.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Words at Crvena Zvezda training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Miloš Veljković 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.
Match5 Dec 2026
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Ninety minutes of Nemanja Radonjić at his very best
Marked 9.00. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Crvena Zvezda.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Matheus gets it from the manager
“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.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Defences have started doubling up on Nemanja Radonjić
4 goals and a season average of 7.46 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Loan watch7 Dec 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Crvena Zvezda, and 3 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match5 Nov 2026
2‑0 against HNK Rijeka, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Aleksandar Katai was at the centre of the description.
Match7 Nov 2026
Whatever happens, Crvena Zvezda do not lose
11 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Marko Arnautović, 37, rolls back the years — 8.33
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.33 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
27 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 24. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market9 Nov 2026
Matheus wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Crvena Zvezda hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
22 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Crvena Zvezda training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Miloš Veljković 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Mohamed Abo Fani 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market2 Nov 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at BATE, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad2 Nov 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” BATE may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market2 Nov 2026
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Vladislav Yatskevich will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around BATE the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad2 Nov 2026
“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; BATE are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at BATE training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joazhiño Arroé 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.
Boardroom2 Nov 2026
Wages eat 120% of everything BATE earn
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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad19 Oct 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” BATE may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad19 Oct 2026
A fracture rules Zakhar Gitselev out for 23 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason BATE will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market19 Oct 2026
Only the photograph left for Ilya Raschenya
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ilya Raschenya will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around BATE the goodbyes have quietly begun.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad28 Sep 2026
André Hansen is the hero from the spot
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with André Hansen: 3 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Match23 Sep 2026
Cup progress for BATE
A 2‑2 win over Slavia Mozyr, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Squad28 Sep 2026
A fracture rules Zakhar Gitselev out for 46 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason BATE will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
No sign of nerves from Jovan Trač at 17 — 7.77
The hardest thing about being 17 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Jovan Trač did not need any: 7.77, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Match23 Sep 2026
The wait goes on for BATE
5 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.
Market28 Sep 2026
Ivan Chernykh has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around BATE they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom28 Sep 2026
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Ivan Chernykh has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Tempers go at BATE
Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad31 Aug 2026
Răzvan Sava gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Răzvan Sava has just signed for Crvena Zvezda, and for once the answer mattered.
Market31 Aug 2026
Javor-Matis come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Crvena Zvezda did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market31 Aug 2026
Every dressing room knows how to read a signing like this one. Răzvan Sava is not here to sit and wait indefinitely, and the man whose place he has been bought to take knows it better than anyone.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match29 Aug 2026
Whatever happens, Crvena Zvezda do not lose
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Răzvan Sava from Universitatea Craiova for $4.1M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
Squad31 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Marko Arnautović, and the manager let it.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Marked 8.82 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Match29 Aug 2026
A 1‑1 draw with OFK Beograd leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Market10 Aug 2026
The offer from Radnik Surdulica for Nikola Stanković was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Market10 Aug 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Crvena Zvezda heard it as anything else.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
24 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Miloš Veljković and Crvena Zvezda agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Miloš Veljković 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 ratings10 Aug 2026
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 22 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Market10 Aug 2026
Add another name to the list: Javor-Matis have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Jovan Trač. The answer from Crvena Zvezda has not changed — yet.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.92, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Match8 Aug 2026
It finished 2‑0, and it was Miloš Veljković’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Crvena Zvezda.