15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Daugavpils lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Sebastian Trimmel and Daugavpils agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Kevin Soro 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.
Nobody at Daugavpils 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.
Daugavpils opened the door and nobody walked through it. So Bruno Melnis stays — listed, trained, and available — while both sides mark the days to January on the same calendar.
In brief
MarketThe clock does Elijah Addai’s negotiating for him
23 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Daugavpils lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Daugavpils they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom7 Feb 2028
Deadline passes with 3 signed and 1 gone
That is the business done at Daugavpils 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.
Ziad Ouled-Haj-M'hand 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.
“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; Daugavpils are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Daugavpils this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
7 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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Words at Daugavpils training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ceti Junior Tchibinda 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.
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.
Position 6 and 10 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
“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 Daugavpils, and it is not being withdrawn.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Spartaks is saying, and nobody at Daugavpils is enjoying the guessing.
The phone has started ringing about Daniel Maxim again, and this time the name on the line is Concordia Chiajna. Daugavpils are listening politely and promising nothing.
Squad24 Jan 2028
Charles Ezeh 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Elijah Addai is on it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Daugavpils will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Daniel Maxim has, at Daugavpils, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
“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 Daugavpils know it.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
1 for Oleksandr Chornomorets, marked 7.61, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Feniks this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sepsi OSK can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Farul Constanța keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Sepsi OSK offered $250.0K; Corvinul Hunedoara said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Adnan Aganović 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.
The name of Dávid Sigér has come up in conversations Sepsi OSK were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Szeged-Csanád GA will make the call about Omar El-Sawy this week. Sepsi OSK have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
In brief
SquadMoses Mawa falls out with a teammate over standards
Squad6 new faces, and Sepsi OSK are still learning each other