“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; Jablonec are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Jablonec this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Jablonec, and 0 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.
He is 22 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.
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 Jablonec this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 9 combined actions and a mark of 6.63, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
A goalkeeper’s error has no defender behind it to tidy it away. He knew before the ball crossed the line, the crowd knew a second later, and there is nothing anybody can say tonight.
The dugout23 Nov 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 1‑3 Lukas Holes left the room before anybody could ask which.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jan Chramosta trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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.
Teplice next, and one man in the Jablonec dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
At 22 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.
Sebastian Nebyla 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Jablonec can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Nobody at Jablonec 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jan Chramosta trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Jablonec, another week without a signature from Saidou Alioum.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Slovan Liberec in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
The shirt still fits. Petr Ševčík is back at Jablonec, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
The first defeat in 5 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Zlin; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
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.
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 Eduard Sobol is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Jablonec, and both men came out saying it was fine.
30 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Banik Ostrava lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Abdallah Gning provided it, and the 8.46 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Michal Kohút has gone, the accounts have $3.9M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
The offer from KFC Komárno for Matej Malenšek was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Sparta Prague paid $3.9M and Banik Ostrava took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $94.6K — a club that wants Divine Teah enough to be asked twice.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Matej Franko had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
The offer from Sparta Prague for Klemen Mihelak was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
3 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.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Jablonec have paid $360.0K for Patrick Kpozo, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
Sebastian Nebyla 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.
A 1‑0 win over Slavia Prague, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Add another name to the list: Viktoria Žižkov have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about David Nykrín. The answer from Jablonec has not changed — yet.
7.54, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Jablonec had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Lukas Holes kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
In brief
The dugoutEbrima Singhateh is still being punished for one mistake