Marked for Juan Santiago
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom31 May 2027
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Gornik Leczna is running low.
Squad31 May 2027
Bartosz Śpiączka and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout31 May 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Kamil Kruk, and the manager let it.
In brief
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Squad
Rufo falls out with a teammate over standards
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The dugout
Mateusz Hołownia knocks on the manager’s door
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Squad
Rufo takes up the language
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Squad
The training reports on Juan Santiago are not good
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom3 May 2027
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Arkadiusz Jozwiak has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Boardroom3 May 2027
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Gornik Leczna is running low.
The dugout3 May 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Kamil Kruk, and the manager let it.
Squad3 May 2027
Words at Gornik Leczna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bartosz Biedrzycki 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 dugout3 May 2027
Isaque without the man who signed him
Every squad is half players the manager chose and half players he inherited. Isaque was chosen, the man who chose him has gone, and he starts again from nothing under the next one.
Boardroom3 May 2027
$2.5M taken back off the Gornik Leczna table
What was available in the summer has quietly gone. Upstairs nobody will call it a change of ambition; downstairs nobody will call it anything else.
Market3 May 2027
“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.
Squad3 May 2027
“I did not sign to watch. Nobody does.” The oldest complaint in the game, and Gornik Leczna will have to answer it with minutes or with a move.
The dugout3 May 2027
The manager makes Rufo a promise
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Gornik Leczna. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager plants his flag on Isaque
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Squad
One-to-one work for Juan Santiago
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Squad
Isaque is the talk of the training ground
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad14 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Egzon Kryeziu
32 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Gornik Leczna lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match12 Dec 2026
9 matches without a win for Gornik Leczna
The run now stands at 9, and the questions being asked around Gornik Leczna are no longer polite ones.
Match12 Dec 2026
Zaglebie left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
“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.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 18. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Rufo 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 dugout14 Dec 2026
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 Jan Klich left the room before anybody could ask which.
Market14 Dec 2026
He is 15, and nobody at Gornik Leczna signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
“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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Girona can pretend not to have heard.
Market7 Sep 2026
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Girona ran out of time with Almería. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 20 signed and 2 gone
That is the business done at Girona until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Market7 Sep 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Girona have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Somebody has moved past him. It is not a dropping and it is worse than one, because a dropping is about a Saturday and this is about where he stands.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Álvaro Carreras has moved up it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Portu loses the armband
The captaincy has been taken off Portu. Girona will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
A reunion for Portu
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Real Sociedad in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.