Olaniyi Saheed 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.
The gap in the accounts was filled from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be grateful and to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings arrive together.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Chrudim are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Everybody at Chrudim saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 35 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Chrudim, another week without a signature from Amar Milisic.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Chrudim is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Nobody at Chrudim 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.
Squad12 Mar 2035
Words at Chrudim training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Šimun Grgić 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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Chrudim, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Olaniyi Saheed was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chrudim this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $27.3M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
“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 Chrudim, and it is not being withdrawn.
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.
Everybody at Chrudim saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 40 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Chrudim, another week without a signature from Jiří Sušický.
Sigma Olomouc have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
The words a physio says slowly. 37 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.
5 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Chrudim can tell you which week it ends in.
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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Interim Coach after 0‑3, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
4 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chrudim this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Chrudim know it.
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.
The 86th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Anas El Mahboubi decided nobody was going anywhere. Slavia Kroměříž had no time left to answer.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Anas El Mahboubi. 1‑0 against Slavia Kroměříž, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Interim Coach could afford to be generous.
In brief
The dugoutFabian Troost knocks on the manager’s door
The dugoutYohan Roche is still being punished for one mistake
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 39 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Chrudim is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Nobody at Chrudim 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Šimun Grgić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Chrudim are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Slavia Kroměříž in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.