Marked for Jackson Irvine
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Oct 2026
Eric Smith 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 St. Pauli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match17 Oct 2026
It finished 2‑1, and it was Antonio Casas’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to St. Pauli.
Squad19 Oct 2026
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
A performance of 8.28 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad19 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Jackson Irvine
“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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at St. Pauli training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Louis Oppie 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Eric Smith 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Karol Mets 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and St. Pauli 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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
A mark of 7.24, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market3 Aug 2026
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Jackson Irvine commits to St. Pauli for another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Joel Chima Fujita 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Eric Smith 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Market3 Aug 2026
24 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.