Marked for Peter Hamsik
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match5 Feb 2028
The run at home goes on for AS Trencin
15 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Market7 Feb 2028
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at AS Trencin is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market7 Feb 2028
The bid was some way short and AS Trencin did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Boardroom7 Feb 2028
Window shuts: 4 in, 3 out at AS Trencin
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 4 arrived, 3 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Match5 Feb 2028
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now AS Trencin have 3 straight wins of it.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Defences have started doubling up on Ganbold Ganbayar
15 goals and a season average of 7.33 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Squad7 Feb 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 AS Trencin this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets7 Feb 2028
$120.0K on the table at Zlate Moravce. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Words at AS Trencin training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gia Nadareishvili 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match29 Jan 2028
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. AS Trencin scored in the 92th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Market31 Jan 2028
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Lucko waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AS Trencin is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market31 Jan 2028
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Player ratings31 Jan 2028
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.79, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad31 Jan 2028
24 goals and a season average of 7.36. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Transfer targets31 Jan 2028
The offer went to Púchov this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Pablo González and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets31 Jan 2028
$120.0K was the most the club would pay and Zlate Moravce 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.
Market31 Jan 2028
The interest is real enough to have reached print. AS Trencin have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match1 Jan 2028
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 19 matches without defeat is a foundation AS Trencin did not have in the autumn.
Match1 Jan 2028
Slovan Bratislava U21 will want this one forgotten quickly: 6‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. AS Trencin were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings3 Jan 2028
Two goals and a mark of 9.01 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings3 Jan 2028
Two goals and a mark of 8.98 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings3 Jan 2028
A brace, and Stanley Mills takes the afternoon — 8.47
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Stanley Mills provided it, and the 8.47 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Squad3 Jan 2028
Defences have started doubling up on Pepijn Doesburg
22 goals and a season average of 7.37 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Match1 Jan 2028
AS Trencin keep winning on the road
7 away wins in a row. Travelling support is the truest kind, and this season it is being repaid in the only currency that counts.
Squad3 Jan 2028
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and AS Trencin have had the benefit of it.
Player ratings3 Jan 2028
Pablo González, 34, rolls back the years — 7.86
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.86 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
The dugout18 Oct 2027
“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 ratings18 Oct 2027
Two goals and a mark of 8.87 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Market18 Oct 2027
Only the photograph left for Kristo Hussar
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Kristo Hussar will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around AS Trencin the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings18 Oct 2027
Richard Križan pops up at the right end — 7.97
7.97, 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.
Match16 Oct 2027
Still nobody has beaten AS Trencin
The unbeaten run reaches 8. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Defences have started doubling up on Pepijn Doesburg
15 goals and a season average of 7.29 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Pablo González and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Words at AS Trencin training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pepijn Doesburg 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.