The words a physio says slowly. 67 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 Levski can pretend not to have heard.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 91th minute. Cherno More will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Christian Makoun 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.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Levski training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Everton Bala 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.
7.55, 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.
Christian Makoun 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.
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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Lokomotiv Sofia the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Levski will enjoy reviewing.
Two goals and a mark of 8.13 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Maicon 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Levski training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Álex Centelles 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.
It needed Marko Dugandžić to find the net to bring anything home at all: 5‑5 against Lokomotiv Sofia, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
11 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.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Spartak 1918 the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Levski will enjoy reviewing.
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.
The phone has started ringing about Everton Bala again, and this time the name on the line is CSKA Moscow. Levski are listening politely and promising nothing.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Levski heard it as anything else.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Levski training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Everton Bala 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.
Luis Vargas 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.
Osasuna arrived with $6.8M and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Svetoslav Vutsov was one of the reasons people came, and $6.8M does not replace that by itself.
Christian Makoun 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.
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.
3 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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Levski will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Levski, another week without a signature from Nikola Leković.