Veljko Jelenković 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.
“I did not go to NK Maribor to sit and watch. I want to come back to Olimpija Ljubljana and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 10 matches say the rest.
Nobody at Olimpija Ljubljana will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The loan was meant to give him football. 0 games and 0 goals later he is back at Olimpija Ljubljana no further forward, and everybody involved will explain why it was not their doing.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Marko Brest has written the date down.
A call-up flatters the player and the club that produced him in the same breath. Olimpija Ljubljana would like him back in one piece and know they will not be consulted.
“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 The request is on a desk at Olimpija Ljubljana, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I watch every Olimpija Ljubljana game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at BATE runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Olimpija Ljubljana, another week without a signature from Michael Pavlović.
Market6 Mar 2028
Matevž Dajčar returns from a loan that taught him nothing
1 appearances and 1 clean sheets. A goalkeeper learns his job by playing it, and a season that gave him neither the games nor the shut-outs is a year taken off the front of a career.
Market6 Mar 2028
Bor Ceferin returns from a loan that gave him nothing
4 appearances and 0 goals is not a season, it is a year somebody has lost. Whether that is his fault, the borrowing club's or the people who arranged it is the argument the next few weeks will have.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Smorgon waiting with a shirt. Nobody at BATE is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The offer from Gomel for Pavel Dubovskiy 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what BATE can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at BATE is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuriy Kovalev 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.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
The offer from Suduva for Fredéric Ananou 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.
“I watch every Olimpija Ljubljana game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at BATE runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Nobody at Olimpija Ljubljana will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Marko Brest trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Olimpija Ljubljana. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Olimpija Ljubljana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Olimpija Ljubljana, and 0 appearances in 19 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at Olimpija Ljubljana will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Marko Ristić trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Indrit Tuci signs something — a contract at Olimpija Ljubljana or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“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.
5 goals in 12 games at NK Krka — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Olimpija Ljubljana updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Olimpija Ljubljana. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at BATE is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Roman Yevgenjev 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kirill Kaplenko 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.
Nobody at BATE will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
7.94, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Olimpija Ljubljana will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 11 combined actions and a mark of 7.26, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
NK Maribor next, and the two sides the division is watching meet each other. Whoever wins will be told nothing is decided in the same breath as being congratulated.
The first defeat in 4 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against NK Celje; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” BATE 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 BATE is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at BATE this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuriy Kovalev 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.
24 appearances at Dnepr Mogilev and the goals have stopped going in. BATE lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at BATE, another week without a signature from Ivan Khomukha.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. BATE know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Koper next, and the two sides the division is watching meet each other. Whoever wins will be told nothing is decided in the same breath as being congratulated.
“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 Olimpija Ljubljana know it.
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 Dimitar Mitrovski is on it.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Olimpija Ljubljana will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Olimpija Ljubljana, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Koper next, and one man in the Olimpija Ljubljana dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Olimpija Ljubljana know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” BATE have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around BATE they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Roman Yevgenjev 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at BATE can tell you which week it ends in.
At 23 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.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Yuriy Kovalev 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.
Olimpija Ljubljana ran out of time with Envigado. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
“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 Olimpija Ljubljana, and it is not being withdrawn.
12 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
1 for Adrian Zeljković, marked 7.51, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Marko Brest 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.
At 23 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.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Žiga Pečjak had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
The fee is $460.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Rudar Velenje drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Francesco Tahiraj is living that version at Olimpija Ljubljana, and it tends to show in the first month.
10 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Dino Kojić 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Viktoria Plzen have kept their man, and Olimpija Ljubljana go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The name of Benjamin Sesko has come up in conversations Olimpija Ljubljana were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.