Carles Soria damages knee ligaments — 106 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 106 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.
Marked 9.14 — 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Asteras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Jun 2034
Words at Asteras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Julián Chicco 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 65 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 11 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Asteras have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Asteras lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Panetolikos the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Asteras will enjoy reviewing.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.71 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Gastón Pérez will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Asteras the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Owen Wijndal 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Panagiotis Katsikas and Asteras agree another 2 years.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Giannis Kalanidis will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Asteras the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Asteras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Aug 2033
Baba Rahman 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.