Marked for Daniel Carter
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match20 Jan 2029
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Vittoriosa Stars are no longer polite ones.
Transfer targets22 Jan 2029
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Marsaxlokk keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad22 Jan 2029
Robbie Cleary and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match20 Jan 2029
1‑3 to St. Andrews, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Transfer targets22 Jan 2029
Vittoriosa Stars asked and Hamrun Spartans said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad22 Jan 2029
Words at Vittoriosa Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guilherme Queda 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.
Boardroom22 Jan 2029
No fees may be paid for anybody, whatever the squad needs. Every rumour about this club until it lifts is a rumour about a deal that cannot be done.
The dugout22 Jan 2029
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑3 Ivan Fenech left the room before anybody could ask which.
Squad22 Jan 2029
“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 Vittoriosa Stars know it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad13 Nov 2028
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 15 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Squad13 Nov 2028
72 days out for Gianluca Zammit after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Vittoriosa Stars will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market13 Nov 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Vittoriosa Stars can pretend not to have heard.
Squad13 Nov 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vittoriosa Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Nov 2028
Guilherme Queda 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.
Player ratings13 Nov 2028
18 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Player ratings13 Nov 2028
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market13 Nov 2028
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Player ratings13 Nov 2028
16 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
In brief
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The dugout
The view from the dugout
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The dugout
Daniel Carter gets it from the manager
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The dugout
Robbie Cleary asks for a word with the manager
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Aug 2028
32 days out for Renan Bigode after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Vittoriosa Stars will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Transfer targets21 Aug 2028
Everything agreed with Hamrun Spartans, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Áquila 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.
Transfer targets21 Aug 2028
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Mathis Mukuna 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.
Squad21 Aug 2028
The medical room confirms 33 days on the sidelines for Daniel Carter, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
The dugout21 Aug 2028
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout21 Aug 2028
João Vitor gets picked when it counts
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 João Vitor is on it.
Market21 Aug 2028
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Áquila’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.