“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 The request is on a desk at Sesvete, and it is not being withdrawn.
Marked 7.99. There is a kind of forward whose value only shows up when you count what he was involved in rather than what he finished, and this is the day that argument makes itself.
Maro Vrdoljak 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 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sesvete this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
The dugout17 Aug 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 Filip Majer left the room before anybody could ask which.
Olimpija Ljubljana have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
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 dugout17 Aug 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Toni Gorupec
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.
He is doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and Sesvete know which stage they are at.
Everything agreed with Triglav Kranj, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Mateo Bačić 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Dinamo Zagreb have kept their man, and Sesvete go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Antonio Pasalic 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. Filip Petkov is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Petar Juranovic 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. Martin Srna 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 hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Duje Reić did not need any: 7.69, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Sesvete can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Moses Zambrang Barnabas 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 20 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 name of Adrian Pudić has come up in conversations Sesvete were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
In brief
SquadToni Gorupec falls out with a teammate over standards