David Eze

Striker - Al Fujairah
12 Sep 2032
Sunday
Process

Marked for David Eze

312 Edition

The Al Fujairah Post

19 Jul 2032
From our football correspondent Uneasy

The terraces

Anger at Al Fujairah spills outside the ground

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.

Squad

A knee injury of the worst kind for Zayid Sultan

80 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al Fujairah lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.

Match

Al Fujairah are in real trouble now

Position 14, 5 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.

Transfer targets

Too dear: Al Fujairah walk away from Brahian Palacios

$2.5M was the most the club would pay and Al Jazira were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.

Market

Mahmoud Al Naqbi puts it in writing

“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 The request is on a desk at Al Fujairah, and it is not being withdrawn.

Squad

Souleymane Diaby 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 Al Fujairah this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.

Squad

Zago Zegarra 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.

Transfer targets

Door shut on Yussif Suleiman

Al Fujairah asked and Al Wasl said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.

Squad

Home is on David Eze's mind

“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; Al Fujairah are dealing with a man who wants a different country.

In brief

Back issues
253 Edition

The Bjelovar Herald

2 Jun 2031
From our football correspondent Upbeat

Squad

Stefan Colakovski damages knee ligaments — 56 days out

The words a physio says slowly. 56 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.

Market

David Eze hands in a written request

“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bjelovar can pretend not to have heard.

Squad

Josip Palić 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 Bjelovar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.

Squad

Filip Krovinović signs a new deal

“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Filip Krovinović commits to Bjelovar for another 2 years.

Squad

Duje Ušalj 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.

Transfer targets

NK Osijek tell Bjelovar: Tin Bjelica is not for sale

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.

Market

Dugopolje watching Frano Medić

The interest is real enough to have reached print. Bjelovar have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.

Market

Bjelovar promote Tomislav Petkovic from within

The academy exists for exactly this morning. Tomislav Petkovic 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.

Market

One of our own: Filip Ivanovic joins the Bjelovar first team

Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Filip Ivanovic is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.

In brief