12 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Words at Crvena Zvezda training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Miloš Veljković 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Crvena Zvezda this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Muhammed Cham is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
12 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.
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Crvena Zvezda have 14 straight wins of it.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Up for the corner, and Tomás Händel delivers — 7.76
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Tomás Händel scored, was marked 7.76, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
“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.
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.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Crvena Zvezda heard it as anything else.
Miloš Veljković 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.
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Rade Krunić 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.
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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Baptiste Roux is living that version at Crvena Zvezda, and it tends to show in the first month.
The chase for Baptiste Roux ended with $860.0K changing hands and TSC out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Miloš Veljković 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.
6 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.