Olympiacos have gone to Olympique de Marseille with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The clubs have shaken hands with Panionios; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Olympiacos will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Olympiacos people have started saying his name in the past tense.
5 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
At 35 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.
A mark of 7.66 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.26 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Olympiacos heard it as anything else.
At 22 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.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Olympiacos have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Nobody at Olympiacos 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Antonis Tsiftsis was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Olympiacos will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Olympiacos would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
The offer from Atromitos for Gustavo Puerta 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.
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $10.1M has been paid because Fashion Sakala is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Olympiacos people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Fashion Sakala has just signed for Olympiacos, and for once the answer mattered.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. AEK have kept their man, and Olympiacos go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
With 5 players away on international duty the sessions are small and the manager can actually hear himself. It is the one break in the season, and it never quite feels like one.
Every long career reaches the week the player starts thinking about the last one. He would like it to be at the club that first put him on a pitch, and Olympiacos now know that too.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dani García was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Atromitos 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.
Thanasis Karamanis and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Atromitos are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Atromitos would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 32 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
20 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Olympiacos lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The offer went to Padideh this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Ethnikos Achnas had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Olympiacos asked and Red Bull Salzburg said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Mansur has just signed for Olympiacos, and for once the answer mattered.
Santiago Hezze and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Olympiacos will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
30 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Olympiacos lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Santiago Hezze had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Atromitos have accepted the money. What Olympiacos do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
The offer from Dijon for Jota Silva 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Slavia Prague have kept their man, and Olympiacos go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Olympiacos heard it as anything else.
The phone has started ringing about Clayton again, and this time the name on the line is Famalicao. Olympiacos are listening politely and promising nothing.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $1.1M — a club that wants Jeremy Antonisse enough to be asked twice.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Atromitos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dani García was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Atromitos asked and Sporting Cristal said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Add another name to the list: PAS Giannina have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Dimitris Tsakmakis. The answer from Atromitos has not changed — yet.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Atromitos, another week without a signature from Dani García.
Still no offer on the table, and Samuel Moutoussamy’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
“56 caps was 56 more than the boy who started ever expected.” At 34 he has stepped away from the national side and has not stepped away from Atromitos.
In brief
The dugoutKelvin Ofori knocks on the manager’s door
The terracesSupporters make their feelings known about Mansur