Marked for Nikitas Synolakis
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad29 Jul 2030
123 days out for Manolis Saliakas after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Levadiakos will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market29 Jul 2030
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Levadiakos can pretend not to have heard.
Squad29 Jul 2030
Agustín Urzi and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets29 Jul 2030
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad29 Jul 2030
A row about effort at Levadiakos
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Joel Abu Hanna was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets29 Jul 2030
A loan move for Mark Engel is in the works
Levadiakos have made the call to Club Brugge. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Squad29 Jul 2030
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Levadiakos can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
The dugout29 Jul 2030
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.
The dugout29 Jul 2030
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Spyros Risvanis trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Jul 2030
A fracture rules Manolis Saliakas out for 151 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Levadiakos will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market1 Jul 2030
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Levadiakos can pretend not to have heard.
Market1 Jul 2030
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Levadiakos have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The dugout1 Jul 2030
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad1 Jul 2030
Agustín Urzi and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets1 Jul 2030
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad1 Jul 2030
Nikitas Synolakis has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad1 Jul 2030
Alessandro Vimercati 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.
Transfer targets1 Jul 2030
FC Copenhagen have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market18 Jun 2029
“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.
Transfer targets18 Jun 2029
The deal with Olympiacos is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Boardroom18 Jun 2029
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Nikitas Synolakis has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad18 Jun 2029
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.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Diego Trejo is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad18 Jun 2029
A row about effort at Asteras
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Kostas Thymianis was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets18 Jun 2029
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Fenerbahce have kept their man, and Asteras go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad18 Jun 2029
“The easiest signature of my career.” Fernando Ferreira and Asteras agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Market18 Jun 2029
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Panagiotis Retsos may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces30 Apr 2029
Anger at Asteras spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Boardroom30 Apr 2029
The scrutiny sharpens at Asteras
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Asteras is running low.
Market30 Apr 2029
“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.
Market30 Apr 2029
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Asteras is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad30 Apr 2029
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.
Squad30 Apr 2029
Words at Asteras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Panagiotis Retsos 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 Apr 2029
41 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
The dugout30 Apr 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Miguel Vaz, and the manager let it.
Market30 Apr 2029
The name of Antonis Tsiftsis keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Asteras say nothing, which says plenty.