Marked for Benjamin Göschl
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Sep 2040
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 72 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad3 Sep 2040
477 appearances across 14 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Pafos know what they have.
Market3 Sep 2040
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Boardroom3 Sep 2040
The Pafos board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Market3 Sep 2040
AE Kition come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Pafos did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad3 Sep 2040
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Dennis Bakke Gaustad and Pafos agree another 2 years.
Squad3 Sep 2040
Rza Cəfərov in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pafos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match1 Sep 2040
It needed Luka Mlakar to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Ermis, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Market3 Sep 2040
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Pafos has been clear about where Matvey Belentjev stands, which is more than many ever get.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad18 Jun 2040
Lorenzo Cordaro damages knee ligaments — 74 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 74 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad18 Jun 2040
A fracture rules Jakub Krejci out for 100 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Pafos will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market18 Jun 2040
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Pafos can pretend not to have heard.
Squad18 Jun 2040
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pafos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Jun 2040
Benjamin Göschl gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Benjamin Göschl has just signed for Pafos, and for once the answer mattered.
Market18 Jun 2040
Aris are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Pafos will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 Nov 2039
87 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sporting CP lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings21 Nov 2039
Geny scores twice — 8.11
Two goals and a mark of 8.11 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad21 Nov 2039
Geny 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.
Market21 Nov 2039
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Sporting CP is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad21 Nov 2039
Words at Sporting CP training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zeno Debast 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.
Match19 Nov 2039
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Geny. 3‑1 against Nacional, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad21 Nov 2039
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Sporting CP know it.
Loan watch21 Nov 2039
7 appearances away from home and 4 goals to show for them. Every one of them makes next summer's conversation a little more expensive.
Market21 Nov 2039
The shop window has Víctor Vidal in it
Sporting CP have let the market know Víctor Vidal can be had. No price in the advert, but everyone in the trade knows roughly what it says.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad30 May 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for João Carvalho
32 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sporting CP B lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad30 May 2039
Albert Kotlín breaks a bone — 112 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 112 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market30 May 2039
“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 Sporting CP B, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market30 May 2039
Diogo Cunha has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Sporting CP B they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad30 May 2039
Words at Sporting CP B training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alessandro Debenedetti 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.
Squad30 May 2039
25 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.