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.
The terraces10 Mar 2036
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 6 of the 25 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
9 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Squad10 Mar 2036
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jack James 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.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout10 Mar 2036
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 2‑3 defeat, delivered by Interim Coach to a room that had heard them before.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Alfie Venners
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Stumbras have done the hard part with Kauno Zalgiris, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Jack James 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Siauliai have kept their man, and Stumbras go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad7 Jan 2036
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dalibor Veleski 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Stumbras, another week without a signature from Vykintas Kazlauskas.
A month in which every rumour is possible and most of them are nonsense. The manager has a list, the board has a number, and neither is telling the other the whole of it.
In brief
MatchContinental football is in reach for Stumbras
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Johnson Opawole is living that version at Stumbras, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad3 Dec 2035
Jack James 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Signings arrive with a picture of the club in their head, and this one’s picture was bigger than the building. He will play well and he will be gone, in that order, and everybody knows it.
Nobody at Stumbras will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jack James 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.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Stumbras will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Deividas Jankauskas is on it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 100 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Tadas Sernas commits to Stumbras for another 3 years.
Squad2 Jul 2035
Marko Capan 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.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Thomas Weiß has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Signed today, seen by nobody for years, and one of them may one day be the reason the club exists. That is the whole of the argument for an academy, and it is a good one.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Stumbras, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The mood at Stumbras has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Position 8 and 3 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
The words a physio says slowly. 95 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.
Dalibor Veleski 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Jérémie Beyoko Mpongo has just signed for Stumbras, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad12 Feb 2035
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marko Capan 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.
Stumbras ran out of time with Kauno Zalgiris. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.