The words a physio says slowly. 38 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.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Hrvatski Dragovoljac will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Hrvatski Dragovoljac, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Hrvatski Dragovoljac know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Hrvatski Dragovoljac is running low.
“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 The request is on a desk at Hrvatski Dragovoljac, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Leon Liović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Piotr Holcel trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“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 The request is on a desk at Hrvatski Dragovoljac, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hrvatski Dragovoljac this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Bjelovar have kept their man, and Hrvatski Dragovoljac go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad10 Feb 2031
Roko Cerić 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.
Giovanni Jerolimov 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 had been thinking. Teodor Kralevski 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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Robert Bjelica after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Hrvatski Dragovoljac know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
45 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Hrvatski Dragovoljac lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Tobias Keller will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Hrvatski Dragovoljac the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Giovanni Jerolimov 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.
15 clean sheets across a season, and the one award on the pitch nobody else is eligible for. Most keepers get through a whole career without a year like it.
Squad27 May 2030
Filip Mažar 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.
Signings arrive with a picture of the club in their head, and this one’s picture was bigger than the building. He will play well and he will be gone, in that order, and everybody knows it.
Nobody at Hrvatski Dragovoljac will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
In brief
The dugoutMarek Duda asks for a word with the manager