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.
Marco Rojas 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.
Nobody at Team Wellington 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Jake Nelson’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Team Wellington needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Niko Barikhashvili trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Team Wellington know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Team Wellington will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
26 points, and the rest of the division looking up. Every side that finishes first spends the season pretending it is not thinking about it, and this one has started pretending.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jonathan Lawson is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Marco Rojas 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Partizan have kept their man, and Team Wellington go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad14 Jun 2027
Ruon Tongyik 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.
Willem Ebbinge 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 done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Team Wellington will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Team Wellington, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Team Wellington asked and Canterbury United said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
10 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Team Wellington told Kayne Razmovski something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Franco Luna is 19, and Team Wellington have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Franco Luna and Team Wellington agree another 3 years.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Steven Lustica is on it.