From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market17 Aug 2026
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Slaven Belupo have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Market17 Aug 2026
HNK Gorica come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Slaven Belupo did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market17 Aug 2026
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Lucko had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Slaven Belupo asked and DAC Dunajska Streda said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Ilija Nestorovski and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match15 Aug 2026
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 1‑2, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Karlo Sentić
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market10 Aug 2026
The offer from NK Osijek for Mihail Caimacov 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.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Mihail Caimacov pops up at the right end — 7.64
7.64, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Ilija Nestorovski 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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Filip Jović commits to Slaven Belupo for another 3 years.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Match8 Aug 2026
It finished 2‑1, and it was Mihail Caimacov’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Slaven Belupo.
Market10 Aug 2026
The name of Filip Krušelj has come up in conversations Slaven Belupo were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Ivan Čović reaches 200 appearances
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Ilija Nestorovski commits to Slaven Belupo for another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Slaven Belupo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match1 Aug 2026
0‑1 to NK Osijek, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Itsuki Urata was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Market3 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Slaven Belupo have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Slaven Belupo, another week without a signature from Ilija Nestorovski.
Market3 Aug 2026
Still no offer on the table, and Dominik Kovačić’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Too much change too quickly at Slaven Belupo
11 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.
In brief
-
The dugout
The view from the dugout
-
Transfer targets
A loan move for Nick Oyekunle is in the works
-
Market
Ivan Čović told to find a new club