Football news

Internet provides you wondrous things. You just connect, go through the news headlines and you can see miracles bigger than any Harry Potter-stuff. I'm not sure though if that's the best timing for them, just a few days before the start of the superliga, when we are about to play the return match against Zaglebie, especially after the first game that didn't really went the way we wanted to say the least.
As we could find out from the news stream, freshly signed Brazilian midfielder Leonardo will not play at the return match against the Poles. He didn't play at the first game either, and it very much seems so that he won't play any games in the near future. The reason (according to mondo.rs) is that Leonardo is out of physical shape so much that he couldn't be able to endure for 90 minutes.
He terminated contract with his previous team Anzhi Makhachkala this February. Since then he didn't play a minute - there are no infos whether he ever trained in the meantime or not at all. The question raises, who and why wanted to bring a seriously out-of-form player to Partizan, for whom it will probably take weeks to get back to shape.

Leonardo (full name: Leonardo da Silva Souza) at Nikola Tesla Airport

(photo: mondo.rs)

Earlier reports told that it had not been easy to sign Leonardo, it took time to convince him to come to Belgrade. Finally he agreed after long negotiations to sign for 3 years. Upon press informations it was Ivica Iliev (who else...) who forced to sign the Brazilian. Iliev told about it all around how much he'd like Partizan to have a "classic No. 10 player", and for some unknown reason he saw his dreams come true in Leonardo.
After all these we got a player compared to whom even I'm in a great shape.

I'd like to see Iliev's face, after he got to know what kind of deficiences the Brazilian have. Just for the sake of it.

By the way, talking about classic No. 10 players, let me suggest a few of them to Monsieur Iliev. Perhaps we could sign one or two of them.

(photo: sports.terra.com)

Meanwhile the two Bulgarians seem to be done with the team. Bandalovski definitely wants to leave Partizan

rumours speak that it's not a new thing at all, he had wanted to find a new team for himself during the winter preparations already. It has been told that the last straw for him was Vulićević getting to the starting 11 against Zaglebie instead of him

while Bojinov was practically yelled off by Ivan Tomić in the locker-room after the Saturday training. One of the reasons was that the Bulgarian is still overweighted, the other reason was discreetly mentioned as "tactical conceptions",

I can imagine. I’m probably not the only one who noticed that Bojinov’s pace would be enough for a League 5 veterans’ game, maybe

mondo.rs mentioned though that Tomić gave out the order to find a striker before the end of the transfer window.

And here comes the punch line. I kept it for the end of this post on purpose.
Partizan’s management gave out a press release about the stadium’s renovations in the near future according to UEFA’s current regulations. To make these renovations possible, the team needed financial support from the Serbian Football Association (FSS). They got it - and the management is now giving thanks to FSS’s president, Slaviša Kokeza,
that Slaviša Kokeza, who was Crvena Zvezda’s vice president not so long ago.
Aren’t they cute?... Let’s wipe off the tears from our eyes that ran out by these so heavy emotions.

The date, time and broadcast of the return match against Zaglebie:

THURSDAY, 21:00 ARENASPORT 1