Marked for Mate Modric
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Dec 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Tempers go at Zadar
Josip Pjaca 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.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Štěpán Chaloupek 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad23 Nov 2026
The medical room confirms 17 days on the sidelines for Marko Vukovic, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Squad23 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zadar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Words at Zadar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Josip Pjaca 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.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Marked 8.05 — 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.
Squad23 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; Zadar are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Nobody's fault and entirely his: a goal that goes into the book with his name against it and nothing about it intended. Zadar deserved better, and so did he.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.79 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Duje Boric runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 28. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Tempers go at Zadar
Robert Ćosić 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Marko Vukovic 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.
Match14 Nov 2026
It needed Rodrigo Bacidalupe to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Cibalia, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Squad16 Nov 2026
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Zadar told Marcelo Kovacevic something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match7 Nov 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Imotski, and it could have been more.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.55, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Rodrigo runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 23. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Tempers go at Zadar
Zvonimir Orsic 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Štěpán Chaloupek 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 terraces9 Nov 2026
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Ninety minutes of Marko Vukovic at his very best
Marked 8.12. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Zadar.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
A performance of 8.11 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad9 Nov 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Sebastián Ferrario, and the manager let it.
In brief
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Squad
Too much change too quickly at Zadar
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Market
11 months and counting on Mohamed Bob
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The terraces
Supporters make their feelings known about Mate Modric
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match28 Oct 2026
The cup run ends for Zadar
0‑3 against NK Osijek, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
The terraces2 Nov 2026
Zadar are taken apart by NK Osijek — and the town wants answers
It finished 0-3. A cup exit is a disappointment; this was a public dismantling, and the difference between the two is the number of people who will still be talking about it in August.
Match31 Oct 2026
No end in sight to Zadar's wait for a win
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Zadar has to find a result from somewhere.
Boardroom2 Nov 2026
The Zadar board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Tempers go at Zadar
Štěpán Chaloupek 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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Josip Pjaca 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.
Match31 Oct 2026
Boris Budimir scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑2 to Rudes, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Squad2 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Mate Modric
“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.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Nobody could get near Duje Boric
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad26 Oct 2026
A one-man rearguard from Mate Modric
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad26 Oct 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zadar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Zadar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marko Vukovic 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
Crisis
Squad19 Oct 2026
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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mate Modric is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Josip Pjaca 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 Zadar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match19 Aug 2026
Zadar through in the cup
A 5‑4 win over Imotski, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Match22 Aug 2026
Zadar win it in stoppage time
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 91th minute. Hrvatski Dragovoljac will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Match19 Aug 2026
Marko Bjelica wins it after the whistle should have gone
98 minutes played. Marko Bjelica found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Imotski went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 9.30 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.14 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Mislav Petkov, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.45
A mark of 8.45 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match22 Aug 2026
Zadar cannot stop winning
5 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Squad24 Aug 2026
A one-man rearguard from Mate Modric
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad17 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market17 Aug 2026
Nomme Kalju come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Zadar did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Match15 Aug 2026
Zadar cannot stop winning
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Market17 Aug 2026
Add another name to the list: Slaven Belupo have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Sime Budimir. The answer from Zadar has not changed — yet.
Market17 Aug 2026
Antonio Tadic has left for NK Osijek in a $810.0K deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Zadar
Josip Pjaca 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 terraces17 Aug 2026
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Match15 Aug 2026
Sibenik made Zadar work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.08, and no argument anywhere in the ground.