“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Piast have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.02 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Piast is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Juande Rivas 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.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Dominik Holec knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
The words a physio says slowly. 139 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Piast will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Filip Borowski is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podbeskidzie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ricardo Santos is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Mihael Mlinarić from Zaglebie for $3.0M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
59 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Podbeskidzie lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Kacper Gach 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.
In brief
SquadWords at Podbeskidzie training over how hard people work
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podbeskidzie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Podbeskidzie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. João Moutinho 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.
19 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.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Maciej Górski.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Podbeskidzie can pretend not to have heard.
5 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.
Gonzalo Pérez 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.
Squad8 Feb 2027
João Moutinho 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.
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.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Podbeskidzie will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
The phone has started ringing about Lucjan Klisiewicz again, and this time the name on the line is Piast. Podbeskidzie are listening politely and promising nothing.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Fernando Ferreira has just signed for Podbeskidzie, and for once the answer mattered.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podbeskidzie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Gonzalo Pérez 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podbeskidzie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Gísli Gottskálk Þórðarson from Lech for $670.0K, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Podbeskidzie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Maksymilian Sitek 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 17 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Podbeskidzie 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 Podbeskidzie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A performance of 9.39 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Podbeskidzie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gonzalo Pérez 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 Podbeskidzie will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Podbeskidzie can pretend not to have heard.
Maksymilian Sitek 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Gonzalo Pérez 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 ratings9 Nov 2026
Kacper Gach was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.82. 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 49 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Podbeskidzie can pretend not to have heard.
28 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.
Gonzalo Pérez 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. Szymon Pankiewicz is living that version at Podbeskidzie, and it tends to show in the first month.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Podbeskidzie will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Successful dribbles: 24. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Podbeskidzie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gonzalo Pérez 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 40 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“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 Podbeskidzie, and it is not being withdrawn.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 70 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 5 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podbeskidzie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Podbeskidzie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gonzalo Pérez 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.
6 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 ratingsKamil Sochań could not find anything