“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maccabi Haifa can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Maccabi Haifa 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Maccabi Haifa are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Đorđe Jovanović. 2‑1 against Hapoel Haifa, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
At 23 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Maccabi Haifa 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Cédric Don 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.
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.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Maccabi Haifa have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Maccabi Haifa will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Maccabi Haifa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadJelle Bataille falls out with a teammate over standards