7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Jarne Flies has agreed terms with NK Osijek for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Jarne Flies 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. Mihael Briški 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.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
12 combined actions and 6.87. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
23 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Trnje lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“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 The request is on a desk at Trnje, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trnje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Aug 2033
Mihael Briški 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.
Trnje asked and Hajduk Split said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout15 Aug 2033
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Interim Coach to a room that had heard them before.
The dugout15 Aug 2033
The manager has not finished forgetting Mihael Briški's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Trnje can pretend not to have heard.
Trnje had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Dinamo Zagreb, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trnje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Jun 2033
Mihael Briški 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Trnje are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Trnje have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Alexandru Radu 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nikola Rodin 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Trnje can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
6 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Josip Brkić trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Daniel Herrera is living that version at Trnje, and it tends to show in the first month.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. HNK Vukovar 1991 have kept their man, and Trnje go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nikola Rodin 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.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $12.7M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.