The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Beroe is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Juan Carlos Pineda 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 21 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luiz Gustavo 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 crowd waited for a goal that never came. Cherno More defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Beroe know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Juan Carlos Pineda 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luiz Gustavo 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.
Juan Carlos Pineda 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.
Juan Pablo Salomoni 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Francisco Varela 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.
Juan Carlos Pineda 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 needed Juan Carlos Pineda to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Botev Vratsa, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Beroe have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Beroe know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
5 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon André Liberal will want back
51 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Beroe lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 Beroe, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Beroe this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.81 — 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.
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.
Juan Pablo Salomoni 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jackson Conway. 2‑0 against Slavia Sofia, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Francisco Varela 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 is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Beroe told Francisco Varela something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Beroe know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“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 Beroe, and it is not being withdrawn.
The 89th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Jackson Conway decided nobody was going anywhere. Septemvri had no time left to answer.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Beroe have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Beroe this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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: Jackson Conway. 2‑1 against Septemvri, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Beroe know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon André Liberal will want back
Player ratingsEmir Kuhinja changes it off the bench
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Beroe this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Jackson Conway is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Juan Carlos Pineda signs something — a contract at Beroe or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Beroe this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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 injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 14 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
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 Beroe this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Montana left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad18 Jan 2027
7 new faces, and Beroe 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Guilherme Barbosa has just signed for Beroe, and for once the answer mattered.
The fee is $360.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Septemvri drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Thomas Drage 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Pablo Salomoni 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. 39 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Septemvri can pretend not to have heard.
Robin Schouten 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Jonas Ferreira is living that version at Septemvri, and it tends to show in the first month.
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 8.38 — 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.
In brief
Player ratingsNinety minutes of Faiz Mattoir at his very best
Robin Schouten 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.
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Septemvri will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 Septemvri, and it is not being withdrawn.
Ivaylo Naydenov 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.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Words at Septemvri training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alexandros Parras 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Septemvri will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Two goals and a mark of 8.63 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Robin Schouten 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.
At 22 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.