“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Marek have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Marek this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Apr 2028
Deroy Duarte 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Marek, another week without a signature from Serkan.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kamen Hadzhiev trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Martin Yankov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Marek the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Deroy Duarte 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 Marek, another week without a signature from Kamen Hadzhiev.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Dzhuneyt Ali 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kamen Hadzhiev trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Marek is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Marek this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad27 Mar 2028
Deroy Duarte 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 is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Marek, and both men came out saying it was fine.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Petar Karaangelov signs something — a contract at Marek or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Dawid Polkowski has written the date down.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Marek, another week without a signature from Pavlo Zakhidnyi.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Marek is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Maksym Shumylo has, at Marek, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Deroy Duarte 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.
6 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.
Nobody at Marek 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Marek, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Kamen Hadzhiev 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.
Squad15 Nov 2027
Deroy Duarte 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.
Something was said to Martin Milushev and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
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 Martin Milushev is on it.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Marek would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Ludogorets keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Add another name to the list: Marek have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Serkan. The answer from Arda has not changed — yet.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 2‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Simeon Vasilev has come out of that comparison in the side, and Arda have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The words a physio says slowly. 31 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Marek can pretend not to have heard.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Ludogorets is saying, and nobody at Marek is enjoying the guessing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Marek this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Georgi Aleksandrov 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.
8 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Arda they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Something was said to Patrick Luan and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Nobody at Arda 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Arda, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Arda is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Patrick Luan signs something — a contract at Arda or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 30 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 Arda is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Preslav Bachev is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Félix Eboa Eboa trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
88 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arda lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Lokomotiv Gorna Oryahovitsa waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Arda is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Two goals and a mark of 8.29 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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 Arda, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer from Qizilqum for Simeon Vasilev 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. CSKA Sofia have kept their man, and Arda go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 9 actions, 6.98, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
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.
17 goals in 15 games at Marek — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Arda updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Chavdar Petkov after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
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 Martin Paskalev is on it.
Botev Plovdiv next, and one man in the Arda dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Arda know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Arda can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Position 5, 25 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
12 appearances away from home and 11 goals to show for them. Every one of them makes next summer's conversation a little more expensive.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
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 Chavdar Petkov to a room that had heard them before.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Arda, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Lokomotiv Sofia next, and one man in the Arda dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Simeon Vasilev 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Chavdar Petkov on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Arda has been clear about where Serkan stands, which is more than many ever get.
Nobody at Arda 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.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Yanko Georgiev: 4 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Yantra go through and Arda go home, 1‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Successful dribbles: 27. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.05 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
7.95, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Birsent Karagaren is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Arda can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Viktor Popov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Marked 8.04 — 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arda this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.