Lee Tae-Suk 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 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Austria Wien can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Nobody at Austria Wien will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
0‑2 against NEC. Continental football is unforgiving about the things a domestic league lets a side get away with, and this was a night spent finding out which of those the club still has.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.86 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Austria Wien can pretend not to have heard.
Johannes Handl 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Samuel Sahin-Radlinger was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Austria Wien has been clear about where Haymenn Bah-Traore stands, which is more than many ever get.
Successful dribbles: 23. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Samuel Sahin-Radlinger 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.
Squad1 Oct 2029
Words at Austria Wien training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aleksandar Dragović 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Harrison Dudziak and Austria Wien agree another 4 years.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Austria Wien will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Austria Wien have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Everything agreed with Mattersburg, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Lee Tae-Suk 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.
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
At 38 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Bulat Gatin has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Austria Wien have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
49 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Austria Wien lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The offer from Wolfsberger AC for Harrison Dudziak was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Samuel Sahin-Radlinger 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Reinhold Ranftl was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Cagliari have kept their man, and Austria Wien go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“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; Austria Wien are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Lee Tae-Suk 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 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Austria Wien is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
In brief
BoardroomThe Austria Wien production line keeps running