The Zadar Gazette
Squad20 Oct 2031
The knee: Fran Cop out for 77 days
77 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Zadar lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Player ratings20 Oct 2031
Mislav Ćutuk runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 32. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market20 Oct 2031
Matej Vinković is on his way
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Zadar is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad20 Oct 2031
Words at Zadar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hrvoje Bjelica 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 dugout20 Oct 2031
The manager makes an example of Fran Petkov
“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.
Match18 Oct 2031
Zadar caught on 86 minutes
The board was up, the win was priced in, and then Sibenik scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
Squad20 Oct 2031
Peter Jackson signs a new deal
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Peter Jackson commits to Zadar for another 4 years.
The dugout20 Oct 2031
Hrvoje Bjelica is still paying for one afternoon at Zadar
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Match18 Oct 2031
Zadar and Sibenik take a point apiece
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
In brief
- Player ratings One moment undoes Hrvoje Bjelica
- The dugout Muhammed Tokoz on the point
- Market The Mislav Ćutuk question follows Zadar around