Marcos Astina 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Borneo told Reva Adi Utama something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borneo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Arema in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
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 shrug has gone, the language is coming, and he now argues in training like somebody who expects to be here next year. Half a signing's value is this and none of it appears on a fee.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Chris Nduwarugira provided it, and the 8.29 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Marcos Astina 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Rizky Saddil on a 4‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Persik next, and one man in the Borneo dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mohamad Anez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.