Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Salvador Agra 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 were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Panagiotis Ioannidis after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Nobody at PAOK will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at PAOK has been clear about where Antonis Tsiftsis stands, which is more than many ever get.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.15 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The board was up, the win was priced in, and then Volos NPS scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Jordi Alba is on it.
It needed Taison to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Volos NPS, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Baba Rahman
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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Panagiotis Ioannidis after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Shots: 6. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. PAOK told Christos Zafeiris something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
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.
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.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
Successful dribbles: 13. 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.
It will be explained as a change for the team and it may even be one. Nobody who has worn one believes that, and neither does the man who has just had it taken away.
In brief
Loan watchThe goals keep arriving from Fedor Chalov’s exile
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Taison has come out of that comparison in the side, and PAOK have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Panagiotis Ioannidis on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Successful dribbles: 21. 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.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Marked 8.50 — 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Panagiotis Ioannidis on a 2‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
In brief
The dugoutKarl Hein has become a man the manager trusts
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what PAOK can pretend not to have heard.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 14 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
7 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Jordi Alba is on it.
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Baba Rahman
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.