Marked for Isaac Matondo
From our football correspondent
Steady
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 11 signed and 4 gone
That is the business done at Koper 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.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
No thanks: Toni Silić rejects the move
Koper had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Hajduk Split, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Koper asked and NK Domzale said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Koper
Nik Omladič 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
The phone has started ringing about Luka Baš again, and this time the name on the line is NK Maribor. Koper are listening politely and promising nothing.
Squad7 Sep 2026
10 new faces, and Koper 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Maj Mittendorfer
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Maj Mittendorfer has come out of that comparison in the side, and Koper have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
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. Isaac Matondo has moved up it.
Market7 Sep 2026
Koper bring in an old head
Sören Dutoit is 35 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match29 Aug 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Rudar Velenje, and it could have been more.
Market31 Aug 2026
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Koper people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
Koper sell a favourite for $1.2M
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Leo Rimac was one of the reasons people came, and $1.2M does not replace that by itself.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Leo Štulac pops up at the right end — 7.72
7.72, 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.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Shakhtar keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Market31 Aug 2026
Leo Rimac has left for Olimpija Ljubljana in a $1.2M deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. CSKA Moscow have kept their man, and Koper go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Marked 8.26 — 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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
16 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match1 Aug 2026
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Robert Berić will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Koper escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Market3 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Josip Iličič and Koper agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Josip Iličič in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Koper this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets3 Aug 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Andraž Ruedl 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Josip Iličič calls time on his country
“86 caps was 86 more than the boy who started ever expected.” At 38 he has stepped away from the national side and has not stepped away from Koper.
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.