Marked for Marcel Lindner
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad22 Mar 2027
Marcel Lindner damages knee ligaments — 19 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 19 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.
Match22 Mar 2027
17 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad22 Mar 2027
A row about effort at Sturm Graz
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nikola Maraš was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Furkan Demir 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.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Sturm Graz are still strangers to each other
6 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.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad15 Mar 2027
Marcel Lindner damages knee ligaments — 26 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 26 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.
Squad15 Mar 2027
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Sturm Graz know it.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Noah Botic and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Loan watch15 Mar 2027
The goals keep arriving from Szymon Włodarczyk’s exile
12 goals in 27 games at Excelsior — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Sturm Graz updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Squad15 Mar 2027
A row about effort at Sturm Graz
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Richard Sukuta-Pasu was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Loan watch15 Mar 2027
“I did not go to Austria Wien to sit and watch. I want to come back to Sturm Graz and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 9 matches say the rest.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
The manager makes an example of Niek Vossebelt
“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.
Loan watch15 Mar 2027
Matteo Bignetti’s loan is measured in nothing happening
6 clean sheets from 14 appearances at Fehervar. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
Market15 Mar 2027
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Niklas Geyrhofer’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.