5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dugo Selo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Ivan Roca 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Dugo Selo pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
“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 Dugo Selo will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
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.
4 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Marko Mikulić 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.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Dugo Selo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Roca 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
“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 Dugo Selo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Successful dribbles: 25. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Deadline passes with 0 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at Dugo Selo until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Everything agreed with Istra 1961, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Dugo Selo asked and Segesta said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
In brief
SquadIvan Roca falls out with a teammate over standards
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Dugo Selo can pretend not to have heard.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Dugo Selo have done the hard part with Istra 1961, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dugo Selo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 20. 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.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Ivan Roca 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Lokomotiva Zagreb have kept their man, and Dugo Selo go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Every club in football 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 somebody has tried it.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 17 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Marko Mikulić 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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Words at Dugo Selo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Roca 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 were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Ivan Babic after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Dugo Selo have made the call to Lokomotiva Zagreb. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Dugo Selo is running low.
Marko Mikulić and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Words at Dugo Selo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Roca 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.
Somebody has moved past him. It is not a dropping and it is worse than one, because a dropping is about a Saturday and this is about where he stands.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑2 Ivan Babic left the room before anybody could ask which.
Two goals and a mark of 8.79 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Isaac Lufuiku is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
10 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dugo Selo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Diego Saina. 2‑0 against Solin, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marko Mikulić 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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Tin Jukić-Peladić, and the manager let it.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at Dugo Selo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Denis Strize 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 at Dugo Selo 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Ivan Roca’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Dugo Selo needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Dugo Selo, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Isaac Lufuiku is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Marko Mikulić 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Dugo Selo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ammeer Auwal 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.
A point taken on 88 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
It needed Dmytro Zudin to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Mladost Zdralovi, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 1‑1 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
“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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Dugo Selo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Denis Strize 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.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Dugo Selo know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Successful dribbles: 15. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Ivan Babic chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Ivan Roca is living that version at Dugo Selo, and it tends to show in the first month.
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Karlo Darojković is a Dugo Selo player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
Marko Mikulić 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.
Dugo Selo asked and HNK Rijeka said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Bruno Boric has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Matej Sutalo is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Stipe Kasalo has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Karlo Darojković was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.