Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Bruno Zdunić will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Dugopolje the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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 The request is on a desk at Dugopolje, and it is not being withdrawn.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Dugopolje will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Dukan Ahmeti did not need any: 7.87, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Adrian Dragoş is living that version at Dugopolje, and it tends to show in the first month.
At 20 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Dukan Ahmeti. 1‑0 against Hrvace, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad3 Jan 2028
Words at Dugopolje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Noa Bilić 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 10 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Dugopolje will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Stipe Mušura will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Dugopolje the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Two sides from the bottom of the table, three points, and an afternoon that will be described afterwards as a relegation decider by whoever loses it.
Squad27 Dec 2027
Words at Dugopolje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Noa Bilić 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dugopolje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The 87th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Ivan Delić decided nobody was going anywhere. Karlovac 1919 had no time left to answer.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Dugopolje will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
14 combined actions and 6.77. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Ivan Delić. 1‑0 against Karlovac 1919, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 7.62. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
The dugout20 Dec 2027
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Boris Ivanovic, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Squad20 Dec 2027
Adam Binar 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.
In brief
The dugoutMarin Karabatić has become a man the manager trusts
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Dugopolje have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Dugopolje is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 18 combined actions and a mark of 6.90, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: NK Osijek keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Stipe Mušura has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Boardroom26 Jul 2027
5 academy players handed senior numbers at Dugopolje
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.
Karlovac 1919 pay $100.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Suduva have kept their man, and Dugopolje go back to a list with one name crossed off it.