Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Position 11 and 21 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.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Position 11 and 21 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Honved is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Davíð Ingvarsson 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.
Squad31 Dec 2029
Words at Honved training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kevin Varga 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.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Honved they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Marked 8.43 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad3 Dec 2029
Andrés Gigena 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.
Squad3 Dec 2029
A place in the month's best eleven for Fataho Nerie
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Fataho Nerie has come out of that comparison in the side, and Honved have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The club looked outside for a month, found nothing it preferred, and handed the job to the man who had been doing it anyway. He knows the building; now he has to prove he knows the rest.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Honved they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Squad5 Nov 2029
Andrés Gigena 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.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Bamidele Yusuf has come out of that comparison in the side, and Honved have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
“Somebody has to pick the team on Saturday, and this week that is me.” An interim appointment with no promises attached, which is how most of them start.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Honved they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Squad8 Oct 2029
Words at Honved training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kevin Varga 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.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Position 11 and 5 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.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad10 Sep 2029
Words at Honved training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kevin Varga 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.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Honved will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
6 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Honved is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 58 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Miron Mucsányi is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Squad16 Jul 2029
Bamidele Yusuf has improved at 28, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 90 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The offer from Vasas for Márk Szelényi 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Honved they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Facundo Rivero 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.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Words at Honved training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kevin Varga 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.
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Honved lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Honved is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
49 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Honved lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Honved is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
81 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Honved lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
120 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Honved lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Honved they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
134 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Honved lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Bence Botka has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Honved they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
The phone has started ringing about Benedek Simon again, and this time the name on the line is Debrecen. Honved are listening politely and promising nothing.
The words a physio says slowly. 28 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.
Bamidele Yusuf 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Santiago López is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Roland Kleinheisler has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Janos Lang has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.