Marked for Predrag Pavlovic
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces7 Oct 2041
Anger at Napredak spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Match5 Oct 2041
Chastening afternoon for Napredak
A 0‑4 beating by Crvena Zvezda was the sort of result that empties a stadium long before the final whistle.
Squad7 Oct 2041
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Napredak will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad7 Oct 2041
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.
Match5 Oct 2041
No end in sight to Napredak's wait for a win
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Napredak has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad7 Oct 2041
Predrag Pavlovic: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Napredak have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad7 Oct 2041
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Napredak this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom7 Oct 2041
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
Market7 Oct 2041
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Lazar Balević’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad30 Sep 2041
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.
Player ratings30 Sep 2041
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.89 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market30 Sep 2041
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Napredak is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Match28 Sep 2041
The wait goes on for Napredak
4 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.
Squad30 Sep 2041
Nikola Skrobonja 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.
Match28 Sep 2041
Vojvodina left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match23 Sep 2041
Napredak sink to position 16
7 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad23 Sep 2041
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.
Squad23 Sep 2041
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Napredak this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Sep 2041
Nemanja Đeković 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.
Squad23 Sep 2041
“The easiest signature of my career.” Petar Maksimovic and Napredak agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Match21 Sep 2041
Radnicki 1923 left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Jun 2040
A fracture rules Mateja Bubanj out for 47 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Napredak will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad4 Jun 2040
A knee injury of the worst kind for Jarvy Jans
38 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Napredak lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad4 Jun 2040
A move Predrag Pavlovic would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Predrag Pavlovic is living that version at Napredak, and it tends to show in the first month.
Market4 Jun 2040
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Napredak is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Boardroom4 Jun 2040
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Nikos Trikatzis 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.
Squad4 Jun 2040
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Dragan Bojat commits to Napredak for another 2 years.