The words a physio says slowly. 60 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.
The offer from NK Varazdin for Antonio Colak 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.
Roko Jurišić 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around NK Osijek they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The name of Josip Tadic has come up in conversations NK Osijek were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Qualification is secured, and next season the big floodlit nights are continental ones. For the players it is a stage; for the accounts it is a lifeline; for the supporters it is passports.
Squad31 May 2038
A season's verdict on Josip Knezevic: the best of his age
NK Osijek have a 21-year-old the division has just voted its finest young footballer. The club's next problem is that everybody else now knows it too.
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. NK Osijek will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Roko Jurišić 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around NK Osijek they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
In brief
SquadDomagoj Bukvić falls out with a teammate over standards
Stanislav Shopov 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.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Andrej Ivanovic 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at NK Osijek is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The words a physio says slowly. 62 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at NK Osijek is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“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 NK Osijek, and it is not being withdrawn.
Stanislav Shopov 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.
In brief
SquadWords at NK Osijek training over how hard people work
101 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. NK Osijek lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 9.20 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” NK Osijek have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Josip Knezevic did not need any: 8.95, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“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 NK Osijek, and it is not being withdrawn.
Vedran Barisic had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and OB were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Vedran Barisic did not need any: 8.41, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.67 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around NK Osijek they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Stanislav Shopov 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.
7 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad15 Dec 2036
Words at NK Osijek training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Roko Jurišić 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 team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Player ratings17 Nov 2036
Antonio Colak, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.66
A mark of 8.66 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around NK Osijek they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Tin Plavotić 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.
Marked 9.36 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Marked 9.09 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Vedran Barisic, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.48
A mark of 8.48 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around NK Osijek they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Stanislav Shopov 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.
Squad20 Oct 2036
Words at NK Osijek training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Roko Jurišić 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Anton Matković. 2‑1 against HNK Gorica, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.