Marked for Predrag Markovic
From our football correspondent
Steady
Boardroom2 Feb 2037
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Strahinja Maksimovic has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Squad2 Feb 2037
A fracture rules Predrag Markovic out for 14 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Novi Pazar will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom2 Feb 2037
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.
Squad2 Feb 2037
17 goals and a season average of 7.59. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Player ratings2 Feb 2037
Age has not caught Luka Bijelović yet — 9.14
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.14 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market2 Feb 2037
“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 The request is on a desk at Novi Pazar, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad2 Feb 2037
Semir Alić 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.
Squad2 Feb 2037
Words at Novi Pazar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vasilije Kostov 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.
Match31 Jan 2037
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Diego Sánchez. 2‑1 against Javor-Matis, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad26 Jan 2037
A fracture rules Predrag Markovic out for 21 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Novi Pazar will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market26 Jan 2037
Partizan come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Novi Pazar did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings26 Jan 2037
Age has not caught Luka Bijelović yet — 9.03
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.03 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad26 Jan 2037
Defences have started doubling up on Ersan Mavrić
6 goals and a season average of 7.41 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Squad26 Jan 2037
The team sheet said everything about Filip Bačkulja
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Filip Bačkulja.
Player ratings26 Jan 2037
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad26 Jan 2037
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Novi Pazar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match24 Jan 2037
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings26 Jan 2037
9 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match17 Jan 2037
Chastening afternoon for Novi Pazar
A 1‑4 beating by IMT was the sort of result that empties a stadium long before the final whistle.
Squad19 Jan 2037
A fracture rules Predrag Markovic out for 28 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Novi Pazar will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad19 Jan 2037
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings19 Jan 2037
Diego Sánchez, 37, rolls back the years — 8.10
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.10 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market19 Jan 2037
The name of Ersan Mavrić has come up in conversations Novi Pazar were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad19 Jan 2037
Semir Alić 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.
Squad19 Jan 2037
Words at Novi Pazar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vasilije Kostov 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.
Boardroom19 Jan 2037
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
Player ratings19 Jan 2037
Shots: 11. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.