Marked for Norbert Suslov
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad13 Aug 2035
Norbert Suslov damages knee ligaments — 14 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 14 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.
Market13 Aug 2035
The offer from MFK Skalica for Santiago Orizi 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.
Squad13 Aug 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Spartak Trnava this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Aug 2035
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Samuel Duris is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad13 Aug 2035
Words at Spartak Trnava training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michal Tomič 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.
Match11 Aug 2035
Slovan Bratislava left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings13 Aug 2035
Successful dribbles: 20. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market13 Aug 2035
Zlate Moravce are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Spartak Trnava will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Market13 Aug 2035
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Santiago Orizi has his answer from Spartak Trnava; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad6 Aug 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Norbert Suslov
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Spartak Trnava lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match4 Aug 2035
Spartak Trnava make home a hard place to visit
18 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.
Match4 Aug 2035
The 89th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Stefan Skrbo decided nobody was going anywhere. AS Trencin had no time left to answer.
Player ratings6 Aug 2035
Age has not caught Stefan Skrbo yet — 8.17
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.17 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad6 Aug 2035
358 appearances across 10 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Spartak Trnava know what they have.
Market6 Aug 2035
Nino Marcelli wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Spartak Trnava hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad6 Aug 2035
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Michal Tomič and Spartak Trnava agree another 2 years.
Squad6 Aug 2035
Nino Marcelli 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.
Market6 Aug 2035
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Spartak Trnava is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad30 Jul 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Norbert Suslov
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Spartak Trnava lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings30 Jul 2035
Successful dribbles: 33. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market30 Jul 2035
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market30 Jul 2035
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Spartak Trnava is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad30 Jul 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Spartak Trnava this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Jul 2035
Words at Spartak Trnava training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michal Tomič 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.
Squad30 Jul 2035
23 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Player ratings30 Jul 2035
Defensive actions: 15, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Match28 Jul 2035
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Podbrezova defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad23 Jul 2035
Norbert Suslov damages knee ligaments — 37 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 37 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.
Squad23 Jul 2035
The match ball belongs to Nino Marcelli, whose 4 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Match21 Jul 2035
5‑0, and Nino Marcelli took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Spartak Trnava tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Match21 Jul 2035
17 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Player ratings23 Jul 2035
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.13 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Boardroom23 Jul 2035
Spartak Trnava moved before anybody else could: a new deal for Andrej Valjent, agreed quietly and announced loudly. Boards extend managers for many reasons; the good one is the one this looks like.
Squad23 Jul 2035
Nino Marcelli 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.
Boardroom23 Jul 2035
6 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Squad23 Jul 2035
Michal Tomič 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad16 Jul 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Norbert Suslov
47 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Spartak Trnava lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market16 Jul 2035
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad16 Jul 2035
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Spartak Trnava will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.