75 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Levski lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Levski have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levski this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Georgi Kostadinov has left for Cherno More in a $170.0K deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Squad11 Jan 2027
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.
The words a physio says slowly. 97 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Levski, and it is not being withdrawn.
The 87th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Armstrong Oko-Flex decided nobody was going anywhere. CSKA 1948 had no time left to answer.
4 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Levski have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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.
It is the quietest kind of dressing-room problem and the one that lasts longest, because nobody has done anything anyone can be disciplined for. 5 players sit outside all 7 groups entirely, which is the detail that tends to matter.
Match19 Dec 2026
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for Levski. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
“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 Levski, and it is not being withdrawn.
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.
Squad30 Nov 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Mazire Soula. 1‑0 against Septemvri, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
18 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.
18 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.
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.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Levski scored in the 95th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Christian Makoun wants continental football; whether Levski can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levski this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 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.
17 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.
“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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levski this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad24 Aug 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.
21 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.
7 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.
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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 24 actions, 6.76, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
“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.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levski this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Sebastian Musiolik has just signed for Levski, and for once the answer mattered.
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad3 Aug 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.