The offer from Fehervar for Samuele Vignato 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.
Ante Oreč 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Justas Lasickas was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Niko Janković trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” HNK Rijeka have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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 HNK Rijeka have had the benefit of it.
The offer from HNK Gorica for Moreno Živković 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.
Everything agreed with Istra 1961, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Aleksa Todorović is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Dejan Petrovič 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Slaven Belupo have kept their man, and HNK Rijeka go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Add another name to the list: Hajduk Split have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Ivan Ćubelić. The answer from HNK Rijeka has not changed — yet.
“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 The request is on a desk at Sibenik, and it is not being withdrawn.
Evan Weir and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Sibenik training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Domagoj Antolić 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.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Sibenik. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The shrug has gone, the language is coming, and he now argues in training like somebody who expects to be here next year. Half a signing's value is this and none of it appears on a fee.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager plants his flag on Leonard Vuk
2‑2 against KV Kortrijk, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Dejan Petrovič was at the centre of the description.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Dejan Petrovič will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at HNK Rijeka escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Position 2, 36 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Dejan Petrovič 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.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.75, and 2 involvements.
Hajduk Split next, and the two sides the division is watching meet each other. Whoever wins will be told nothing is decided in the same breath as being congratulated.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Vedran Petkov was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.11. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sibenik can pretend not to have heard.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Damir Colak is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
17 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at HNK Rijeka this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A performance of 8.38 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Dejan Petrovič was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.26. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Half the programme played, position 2, 22 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
Successful dribbles: 37. 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.
Domagoj Antolić 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.
Half the programme played, position 10, 4 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Damir Lovren to a room that had heard them before.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Franko Knez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.