“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persita can pretend not to have heard.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Alexandre Ramalingom and Persita agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Igor Rodrigues 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.
Persija left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad2 Jul 2029
Fahrul Aditia 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.
100 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
The dugout2 Jul 2029
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 Evan Santoso left the room before anybody could ask which.
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Dylan Ferguson
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persita can pretend not to have heard.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.27 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Bae Sin-Yeong was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Successful dribbles: 22. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Althaf Alrizky 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.
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.
Squad12 Mar 2029
8 new faces, and Persita are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“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; Persita are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
A mark of 7.64, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
The dugout12 Mar 2029
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Evan Santoso kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.