At 21 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Stefan Mitrović 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 manager has re-ordered his thinking and Bibars Natcho has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
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 Milan Vukotić is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Partizan know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Partizan can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Bibars Natcho 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.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Words at Partizan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marko Lekić 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.
Zeleznicar Pancevo made Partizan work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Marko Janković was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.18. 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.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Erik Kojzek will call it something else in private.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Nenad Djuricic could afford to be generous.
“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 Partizan know it.
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
The dugout1 Mar 2027
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Nenad Djuricic left the room before anybody could ask which.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Vanja Dragojević had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Partizan people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Two goals and a mark of 8.55 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
Bogdan Kostić, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.79
A mark of 7.79 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.31 at 38, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $405.0K — a club that wants Andrej Todoroski enough to be asked twice.
The offer went to Bloemfontein Celtic this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Partizan have had the benefit of it.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.19 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The name of Vanja Dragojević has come up in conversations Partizan were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Partizan have gone to Spartak Subotica with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Partizan asked and Cukaricki said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Partizan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Vojvodina left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Iddrisu Baba 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Nenad Djuricic after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
15 appearances at Iraklis and the goals have stopped going in. Partizan lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
Successful dribbles: 15. 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.
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 Demba Seck is on it.
0‑3. Feyenoord play this football every year and it showed in every part of the pitch. The lesson is expensive and, for a club at this stage, probably necessary.
Matija Malekinušić 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.
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 Marko Janković is on it.
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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Nenad Djuricic after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
1‑0 against CSKA 1948, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Demba Seck was at the centre of the description.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Partizan will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Vanja Dragojević did not need any: 7.61, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
It finished 2‑0, and it was Marko Janković’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Partizan.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Iddrisu Baba 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.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Marko Janković was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.16. 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.
Half the programme played, position 2, 29 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
Something was said to Marko Janković and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Partizan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Bibars Natcho 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.
50 for the club now, each one filed in somebody’s memory with a date and a scoreline. Numbers like this are what supporters argue about in twenty years.
Something was said to Milan Aleksić and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Successful dribbles: 14. 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.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Milan Aleksić
The dugoutStefan Mitrović has become a man the manager trusts
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Partizan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Bibars Natcho 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Iddrisu Baba was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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 Marko Janković is on it.
At 20 he is being measured against the rest of the division's kids and coming out in front. The senior version of this award is where the club would like this to lead.
Loan watch16 Nov 2026
Miloš Krunić’s loan is measured in nothing happening
6 clean sheets from 9 appearances at Iraklis. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Milan Vukotić signs something — a contract at Partizan or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 50 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
0‑2 against Shakhtar, and an evening that measured the gap rather than the ninety minutes. Nothing about it was a disgrace and nothing about it was close.
“I watch every Partizan game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Kabel runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Iddrisu Baba 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.
0‑0 against Shakhtar, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Partizan will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Two goals and a mark of 8.29 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Partizan and Radnicki 1923 in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Three points for Partizan, 4‑2 the final word against Radnicki 1923 in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Iddrisu Baba 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.
Marked 8.03 — 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Partizan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.08 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Erik Kojzek. 3‑1 against Mladost Lucani, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Iddrisu Baba 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.
Marked 8.09. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Partizan.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Nenad Djuricic, on a 3‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Partizan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
0‑1 against Feyenoord. Continental football is unforgiving about the things a domestic league lets a side get away with, and this was a night spent finding out which of those the club still has.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Partizan can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Partizan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑2 Nenad Djuricic left the room before anybody could ask which.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Partizan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Bibars Natcho 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.
11 combined actions and 7.43. 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Partizan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iddrisu Baba 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Nenad Djuricic after 2‑3, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
2‑0 against CSKA 1948, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Marko Janković was at the centre of the description.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Partizan will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The 85th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Matija Ninić decided nobody was going anywhere. Spartak Subotica had no time left to answer.
7.80, 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.
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.
One scored and one made, which is a different afternoon from scoring twice and an easier one to overlook. Marked 7.92, and involved in 2 of his side's goals.
Bibars Natcho 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.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 123 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” ZTE had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
“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 Partizan, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 13 signed and 7 gone
That is the business done at Partizan 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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Partizan heard it as anything else.
The phone has started ringing about Marko Živković again, and this time the name on the line is Ušće. Partizan are listening politely and promising nothing.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Iddrisu Baba was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 131 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Marko Janković is a Partizan player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $400.0K — a club that wants Marko Mijailović enough to be asked twice.
The offer went to Radnicki Nis this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The fee is $310.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Novi Pazar drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Partizan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Erik Kojzek did not need any: 7.75, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Partizan asked and Al-Ettifaq said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The name of Mario Jurčevič has come up in conversations Partizan were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Partizan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iddrisu Baba 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.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
In brief
Player ratingsNinety minutes of Nikola Čumić at his very best
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Mateja Milovanović had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Bibars Natcho 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 name of Uroš Zdjelarić has come up in conversations Partizan were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Partizan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Partizan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iddrisu Baba 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Partizan, another week without a signature from Marko Milošević.
36 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Milan Vukotić trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“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.