Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Maccabi Petach Tikva will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Adar Ratner will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Maccabi Petach Tikva escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Elad Amir is living that version at Maccabi Petach Tikva, and it tends to show in the first month.
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 Petach Tikva this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ryota Noma 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Maor Erlich 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.
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Marked 8.10 — 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.
Ryota Noma 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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Maccabi Petach Tikva would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.