The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Toni Firmansyah did not need any: 7.62, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.19 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The offer from Bali United for Paulo Gali 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 number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $3.3K — a club that wants Ilhamsyah enough to be asked twice.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Vasco da Gama keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
$3.0K was the most the club would pay and Bali United 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Jefferson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $3.3K — a club that wants Rasyid Bakri enough to be asked twice.
Persebaya offered $3.0K; PSM 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.
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.
The dugout17 Aug 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 Andi Wibowo to a room that had heard them before.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: AZ keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Jefferson 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Persebaya can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Every long career reaches the week the last one is thought about. He would like it to be where he started, and Persebaya know now that the thought has arrived.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Fachri Darmawan 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. Syahrian Santoso 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Persebaya can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Risto Mitrevski and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Persebaya training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jefferson 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Persebaya, another week without a signature from Risto Mitrevski.