Marked for Ivan Delić
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Window shuts: 16 in, 3 out at Dugopolje
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 16 arrived, 3 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Roko Kurtović
“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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Ivan Delić slips down the pecking order
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Ivan Delić is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Sven Šunta: “I am not a substitute”
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Dugopolje will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Ante Utrobičić named in the team of the month
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Ante Utrobičić is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Roko Kurtović has moved up it.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
Hrvatski Dragovoljac next, and one man in the Dugopolje dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
Andrija Balić asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match29 Aug 2026
A 2-goal lead gone for Dugopolje
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Sibenik kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Dugopolje will be asked about the last half hour all week.
Match29 Aug 2026
The wait goes on for Dugopolje
6 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
6 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Market31 Aug 2026
“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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Niko Garić beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 18. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
“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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Too much change too quickly at Dugopolje
9 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.
Match29 Aug 2026
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad31 Aug 2026
A row about effort at Dugopolje
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sven Šunta was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager’s verdict
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Squad
Ivan Delić finally opens his account
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The dugout
No place in the plan for Mijo Caktaš
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match19 Aug 2026
Rudes ended it 0‑1. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 30. 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Market24 Aug 2026
“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.
Match22 Aug 2026
No end in sight to Dugopolje's wait for a win
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Dugopolje has to find a result from somewhere.
Transfer targets24 Aug 2026
Dugopolje asked and Dinamo Zagreb said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Sven Šunta 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 dugout24 Aug 2026
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
Jonan Tan gets it from the manager
“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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Niko Garić beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 34. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Dugopolje asked and Dinamo Zagreb said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Carlo Mateković commits to Dugopolje for another 3 years.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Dinamo Zagreb have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Match15 Aug 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Lucko leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Squad17 Aug 2026
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Dugopolje are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Robert Babic after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Looking ahead17 Aug 2026
Segesta next, and one man in the Dugopolje dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Market17 Aug 2026
Nobody sells a season ticket on a signing like this. Every manager who has been through a bad October wants one anyway, and Dugopolje have gone and got theirs early.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 28. 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
Imotski come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Dugopolje did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Ivan Delić commits to Dugopolje for another 3 years.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Odd have kept their man, and Dugopolje go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Zoran Nižić and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match1 Aug 2026
0‑1 to Sesvete, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Dugopolje, another week without a signature from Dominik Balić.
Market3 Aug 2026
49 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.
Squad3 Aug 2026
7 new faces, and Dugopolje are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.