“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Girona waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Cádiz is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Agustín Bouzat will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cádiz the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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 The request is on a desk at Cádiz, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Cádiz have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Gimnasia La Plata have kept their man, and Cádiz go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Bojan Kovačević 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Urko Izeta 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.
The name of Marc Cucurella has come up in conversations Cádiz were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Marc Cucurella 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.
The offer went to Girona 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Urko Izeta 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.
Cádiz asked and Club Brugge said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Cádiz, another week without a signature from Juan Palomares.
7 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Two goals and a mark of 9.34 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Brian Conberse will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Avellino the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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 Avellino, and it is not being withdrawn.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Avellino they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jayden Addai was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Andrej Kostić. 2‑1 against Juve Stabia, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.