“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Partizani Tirana can pretend not to have heard.
Sékou Sidibé 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.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Rowan Human falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Partizani Tirana can tell you which week it ends in.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Partizani Tirana 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 Partizani Tirana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Add another name to the list: Flamurtari have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Rei Zekaj. The answer from Partizani Tirana has not changed — yet.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Arafat Doumbia 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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Flamurtari will make the call about Rrok Toma this week. Partizani Tirana have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Partizani Tirana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The name of Diego Contreras has come up in conversations Partizani Tirana were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.