77 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ajka lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.86 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Milan Spremo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Zsolt Tar 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.
Level with 95 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Ajka had all but put away. Kecskeméti TE will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
It needed Krisztián Kirchner to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Kecskeméti TE, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Zoltan Dibusz after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
The words a physio says slowly. 85 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.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Ajka has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Milan Spremo 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
9 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.
The dugout2 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 0‑1 Zoltan Dibusz left the room before anybody could ask which.
93 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Ajka lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.92 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
At 18 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.
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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Nemanja Žunić 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.” Zoltan Dibusz after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Ajka have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Milan Spremo 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 happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 33 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
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.
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.
Nemanja Žunić 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 Milan Spremo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Something was said to Nemanja Žunić and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
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.
In brief
The dugoutPatrick Gânţe knocks on the manager’s door
Milan Spremo 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Nemanja Žunić 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Squad5 Oct 2026
12 new faces, and Ajka 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.
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.
“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.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Zoltan Dibusz chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Milan Spremo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ajka this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
Somebody else is better right now than David López
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Nobody at Ajka is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Krisztián Kirchner provided it, and the 8.90 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Milan Spremo 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. József Balázs has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ajka this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Ajka are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Benjámin Gólik is 18, and Ajka have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
$180.0K was the most the club would pay and ZTE were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nemanja Žunić 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.
Ajka ran out of time with Kisvárda. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Zoltan Dibusz to a room that had heard them before.
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 Zoltán Csizmadia is on it.
Szeged-Csanád GA next, and one man in the Ajka dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“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 Ajka, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have shaken hands with Kisvárda; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Ajka close the window on a squad of their own making
23 in and 2 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $227.5K — a club that wants Milán Szekszárdi enough to be asked twice.
$210.0K was the most the club would pay and Paksi were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Milan Spremo 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.
Dominik Földi 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.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Ajka will try again when the window opens; Kazincbarcika may not be selling by then.
The clubs have shaken hands with Kazincbarcika; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.22 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Zoltán Csizmadia scored, was marked 7.67, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Voždovac is saying, and nobody at Ajka is enjoying the guessing.
$180.0K on the table at Paksi. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $207.0K — a club that wants Diogo Silva enough to be asked twice.
The chase for David López ended with $280.0K changing hands and ZTE out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Ajka have gone to ZTE 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.
$180.0K was the most the club would pay and Mezőkövesd were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Diosgyor have kept their man, and Ajka go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Botond Baráth 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.
18 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.
The clubs have shaken hands with ZTE; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Ajka asked and Karcag said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Milan Spremo 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 doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and Ajka know which stage they are at.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Supporters turn on the $870.0K sale of Dominik Csóka
He is going to Puskas Akademia, the club has $870.0K it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Puskas Akademia pay $870.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Nikolasz Nagy 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.
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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Mate Lang has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Viktor Bese has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Bence Orban is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Dominik Földi is living that version at Ajka, and it tends to show in the first month.
Ajka have gone to Vasas 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Zoltan Dibusz after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.