119 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. NK Celje lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. NK Celje will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Nobody at NK Celje 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Blaž Kramer signs something — a contract at NK Celje or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
9 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at NK Celje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.13 — 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Leonardo Koutris is on it.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Luka Vešner Tičić provided it, and the 8.58 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
NK Krsko made NK Celje work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Match14 Nov 2026
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for NK Celje. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at NK Celje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Darko Hrka 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.
With 6 players away on international duty the sessions are small and the manager can actually hear himself. It is the one break in the season, and it never quite feels like one.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Erik Elsnik could afford to be generous.
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.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Matej Poplatnik. 2‑0 against Koper, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
19 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Andrej Kotnik was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.30. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at NK Celje training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Darko Hrka 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.
In brief
SquadA place in the month's best eleven for Alpha Diounkou
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at NK Celje this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Rudi Požeg Vancaš. 1‑0 against Rudar Velenje, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
16 points at the turn. The first half of a season is a promise; the second is a bill, and the town is about to find out which of the two this one was.
Squad28 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and NK Celje 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Erik Elsnik on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Squad28 Sep 2026
The division's best last weekend was a NK Celje man
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Rudi Požeg Vancaš was the best thing in any of them.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Rudi Požeg Vancaš’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and NK Celje needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what NK Celje can pretend not to have heard.
The phone has started ringing about Svit Sešlar again, and this time the name on the line is NK Maribor. NK Celje are listening politely and promising nothing.
15 combined actions and 7.03. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
At 23 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.
Marked 8.62 — 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.
Marked 8.47 — 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.
0‑1 to Olimpija Ljubljana, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Darko Hrka 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 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.
Successful dribbles: 13. 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.
ND Gorica next, and one man in the NK Celje dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Two goals and a mark of 9.57 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. NK Krka tried to reorganise, NK Celje did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Darko Hrka 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 players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑1, Erik Elsnik could afford to be generous.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
In brief
Looking aheadNK Celje take on the side everybody is chasing
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 10.00 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
A brace, and Svit Sešlar takes the afternoon — 8.48
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Svit Sešlar provided it, and the 8.48 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Luka Kolar has gone, the accounts have $590.0K in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
NK Maribor paid $590.0K and NK Celje took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
In brief
MatchBlaž Kramer among the goals in a wild afternoon
Player ratingsBlaž Kramer was on a different afternoon to everybody else