“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what SV Ried can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” SV Ried have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at SV Ried is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SV Ried this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” SV Ried have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“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 The request is on a desk at SV Ried, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SV Ried this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It needed Kingstone Mutandwa to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Rapid Wien, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Position 8 and 5 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
The deal that would have taken Dominik Kirnbauer to Wolfsberger AC has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to SV Ried with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
Christopher Wernitznig 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.
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.
Marked 8.46 — 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 keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at SV Ried, another week without a signature from Yusuf Maart.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what SV Ried can pretend not to have heard.
Ante Bajić 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 phone has started ringing about Felix Wimmer again, and this time the name on the line is Grodig. SV Ried are listening politely and promising nothing.