57 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Leon lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Leon will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Radek Vítek 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.
Squad28 Apr 2036
Igoh Ogbu 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.
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 Manuel Ugarte is on it.
The words a physio says slowly. 99 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.
Radek Vítek 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.
Squad31 Dec 2035
Igoh Ogbu 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Héctor Ramírez has, at Leon, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Nobody at Leon 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.
The dugout31 Dec 2035
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Gabriel Guardado was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Leon dressing room was either.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Veracruz had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Two goals and a mark of 8.32 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.63 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Club America have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.