15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cukaricki lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Srđan Mijailović 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.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marko Docić 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.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Nemanja Stojkovic is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Branislav Lukic after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
In brief
Squad6 new faces, and Cukaricki are still learning each other
The dugoutLazar Mijović knocks on the manager's door
Successful dribbles: 48. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
23 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cukaricki 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 The request is on a desk at Cukaricki, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Benfica keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Dro 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
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nenad Tomović 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cukaricki know it.
The words a physio says slowly. 30 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 Cukaricki can pretend not to have heard.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 4 arrived, 1 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Srđan Mijailović and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lazar Mijović 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
38 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Two goals and a mark of 8.91 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The offer from Persebaya for Emmanuel Dzigbah 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.
9 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and OFK Beograd were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
The deal with Vojvodina is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cukaricki this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
47 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Srđan Mijailović 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Marko Docić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cukaricki know it.
Cukaricki asked and Legia said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
54 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Srđan Mijailović 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 21 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.
Partizan paid $110.0K and Cukaricki took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Cukaricki can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
62 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cukaricki lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The offer from Crvena Zvezda for Milan Pavkov 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.
Minute 91, against Napredak, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.
71 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cukaricki this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 21 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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Nenad Tomović 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.
Marked 8.24 — 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.
A 1‑1 draw with Javor-Matis leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
The dugout28 Dec 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.” Branislav Lukic chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
The words a physio says slowly. 80 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.
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.
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.
87 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
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.
Successful dribbles: 21. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cukaricki this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Predrag Milenkovic is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nenad Tomović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
96 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Cukaricki will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Successful dribbles: 34. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Two goals and a mark of 9.68 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Zlatan Šehović 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.
At 23 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.
103 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cukaricki lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cukaricki will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cukaricki this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cukaricki know it.
Successful dribbles: 14. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Branislav Lukic was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Cukaricki dressing room was either.
110 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cukaricki lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Cukaricki will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Srđan Mijailović 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.
1 error, one goal, and a night in front of the same three seconds. He will see it tonight, tomorrow and probably in February, and everybody who has played knows exactly which frame he keeps stopping on.
117 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Cukaricki will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The 87th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Uroš Miladinović decided nobody was going anywhere. Radnicki 1923 had no time left to answer.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Srđan Mijailović 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Dan Cameron has just signed for Cukaricki, and for once the answer mattered.
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.
135 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cukaricki will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Successful dribbles: 30. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
“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; Cukaricki are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
He is 23 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Vladimir Ilic 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ivan Stojkovic has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 51 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
At 39 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.86 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Olughu Chinemerem 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. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nenad Tomović 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.
At 20 he has spent a month being better than everybody his age in the league, which is a different and harder thing than one good afternoon. Cukaricki will try very hard not to make too much of it.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Cukaricki will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Successful dribbles: 28. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nenad Tomović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
Emmanuel Dzigbah is 20, and for one weekend he was the best of everybody his age in the division. Nobody should build a career on it and everybody quietly does.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cukaricki will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Emmanuel Dzigbah, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.76
A mark of 7.76 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Successful dribbles: 25. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Lazar Mijović 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Emmanuel Dzigbah. 1‑0 against Spartak Subotica, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lazar Mijović 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. 72 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cukaricki lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Branislav Mitrovic is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Nikola Dimitrijevic is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Milan Pavkov. 1‑0 against OFK Beograd, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 79 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
22 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cukaricki lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Emmanuel Dzigbah provided it, and the 8.27 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cukaricki this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cukaricki know it.
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 players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Branislav Lukic could afford to be generous.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cukaricki will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The words a physio says slowly. 30 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.
Srđan Mijailović 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.
1‑2 to Vojvodina, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bruno Cantanhede 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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Nenad Tomović, and the manager let it.
The dugout28 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 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Branislav Lukic to a room that had heard them 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 95 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Srđan Mijailović 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Ibrahim Gomis has, at Cukaricki, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Nikola Stanković 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.
Cukaricki asked and Radnicki Nis said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Olughu Chinemerem 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Cukaricki training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nenad Tomović 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.
“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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and Cukaricki 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Branislav Lukic after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Cukaricki will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Pribram waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Cukaricki is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 18 arrived, 4 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Marked 9.76 — 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. OFK Beograd have kept their man, and Cukaricki go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Zlatan Šehović 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.
The offer from Crvena Zvezda for Nemanja Miletić 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.
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.
“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 Cukaricki, and it is not being withdrawn.
The fee is $220.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Radnik Surdulica drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Mladost Lucani go through and Cukaricki go home, 0‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
The clubs have shaken hands with Radnik Surdulica; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
“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 Cukaricki, and it is not being withdrawn.
4 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Zeleznicar Pancevo wanted more than $360.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cukaricki this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The name of Uroš Miladinović has come up in conversations Cukaricki were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
$360.0K on the table at Zeleznicar Pancevo. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Successful dribbles: 20. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nenad Tomović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Srđan Mijailović and Cukaricki agree another 2 years.
Srđan Mijailović 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.
Cukaricki asked and Shakhtar said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Nenad Petrovic has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Bogdan Bogdanovic 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Darko Ilic has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The offer from Bekescsaba for Uroš Miladinović 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.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Veljko Radosavljević did not need any: 8.13, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
11 seasons and 403 appearances, all of them here. Careers like this are not designed; they happen to a certain kind of man at a certain kind of club, and this town has one.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.99 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Cukaricki offered $520.0K; Libertad said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cukaricki this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
Player ratingsMilan Pavkov was on a different afternoon to everybody else