Njegoš Petrović 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Vojvodina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stefan Mitrović 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.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Yury Lodygin will call it something else in private.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Vojvodina can tell you which week it ends in.
The young player of the month award goes to a 19-year-old at Vojvodina who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 18 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vojvodina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Nov 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Yury Lodygin's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
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.
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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 15 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
0‑1 away to the standard of Dinamo Zagreb. Nobody will pretend this was a scandal; the gap is real, it is measurable, and closing it is a project rather than a team talk.
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
The terraces26 Oct 2026
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 6 of the 30 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Njegoš Petrović 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.
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.
21 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.
19 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.
Successful dribbles: 32. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Gui Negão, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.66
A mark of 8.66 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
37 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Vojvodina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Slobodan Medojević 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 19-year-old it feels ownership of. Gui Negão 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: Gui Negão. 1‑0 against OFK Beograd, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
8 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.
Siniša Tanjga 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.
Defensive actions: 16. He was first to everything and second to nothing, and the goalkeeper had an easy day because of it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
5 new faces, and Vojvodina 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.
13 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
0‑2 against AZ. Continental football is unforgiving about the things a domestic league lets a side get away with, and this was a night spent finding out which of those the club still has.
7 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.
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Vojvodina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Slobodan Medojević 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 figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vojvodina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vojvodina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Vojvodina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stefan Mitrović 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.
9 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
2‑6. There is a level at which football is played every single week by clubs that have been doing it for fifty years, and an evening like this is what it feels like to arrive there without having done it.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Gui Negão, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.08
A mark of 8.08 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Slobodan Medojević 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.
8 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Vojvodina and Spartak 1918 in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Njegoš Petrović, and the manager let it.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Vando Félix was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.60. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
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 8.67 — 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.
Guillermo Martínez 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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
It needed Vando Félix to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Radnik Surdulica, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Gui Negão did not need any: 7.60, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vojvodina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Stefan Mitrović was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.67. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Yury Lodygin knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Gui Negão provided it, and the 8.63 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Vojvodina can pretend not to have heard.
The offer from Crvena Zvezda for Marko Mladenović 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.
At 19 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.
3 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Zeleznicar Pancevo spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Sava Čestić is living that version at Vojvodina, and it tends to show in the first month.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Vojvodina can pretend not to have heard.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Vojvodina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Slobodan Medojević 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.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Vukan Savićević was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.76. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vojvodina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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 phone has started ringing about Marko Mladenović again, and this time the name on the line is Crvena Zvezda. Vojvodina are listening politely and promising nothing.
Luka Đorđević is 20, and Vojvodina 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.
The offer from Partizan for Dejan Zukić 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.
Nardin Mulahusejnović 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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Zurich will make the call about Nardin Mulahusejnović this week. Vojvodina have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Dejan Zukić was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.15. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Ifet Đakovac. 2‑1 against Radnicki 1923, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Ifet Đakovac was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.84. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.51 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vojvodina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Vojvodina have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Vojvodina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Slobodan Medojević 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 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Vando Félix 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.
In brief
Player ratingsNinety minutes of Njegoš Petrović at his very best
Player ratingsVando Félix was on a different afternoon to everybody else