Marked for Norbert Duda
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market21 May 2029
“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 The request is on a desk at Dobrudzha, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market21 May 2029
Only the photograph left for Jhonatan Cuero
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jhonatan Cuero will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Dobrudzha the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad21 May 2029
Ventsislav Kerchev 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.
Squad21 May 2029
“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; Dobrudzha are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad21 May 2029
Saidu Hamisu knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Saidu Hamisu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market21 May 2029
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Galin Grigorov’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market23 Apr 2029
“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 The request is on a desk at Dobrudzha, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market23 Apr 2029
Jhonatan Cuero has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Dobrudzha they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad23 Apr 2029
Orest Kuzyk in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dobrudzha this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market26 Feb 2029
“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 The request is on a desk at Dobrudzha, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad26 Feb 2029
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market26 Feb 2029
Only the photograph left for Jhonatan Cuero
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jhonatan Cuero will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Dobrudzha the goodbyes have quietly begun.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market19 Feb 2029
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad19 Feb 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dobrudzha this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Feb 2029
“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.
Market19 Feb 2029
Norbert Duda is 19, and Dobrudzha have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Squad19 Feb 2029
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Norbert Duda commits to Dobrudzha for another 3 years.
Squad19 Feb 2029
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Ventsislav Kerchev trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad31 Jul 2028
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market31 Jul 2028
Istra 1961 come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and MSK Zilina did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Miroslav Káčer 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.
Match29 Jul 2028
FK Senica left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad31 Jul 2028
The manager makes an example of Martin Trnovský
“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.
Market31 Jul 2028
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. MSK Zilina will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
The terraces31 Jul 2028
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Hamidou Kante has outgrown this division
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. MSK Zilina know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Player ratings31 Jul 2028
Successful dribbles: 12. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market19 Jul 2027
“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 MSK Zilina, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad19 Jul 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at MSK Zilina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market19 Jul 2027
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Market19 Jul 2027
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Market19 Jul 2027
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Squad19 Jul 2027
Somebody is after Ján Minárik’s shirt
A new face in his position, and Ján Minárik suddenly has to win back what he thought he owned. MSK Zilina have promised nothing — clubs rarely do at this stage.