It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Cincinnati this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at FC Cincinnati, and it is not being withdrawn.
Evander 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Cincinnati this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Evander 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.
Squad25 Oct 2027
Words at FC Cincinnati training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gerardo Valenzuela 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.
Evander 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.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Philadelphia Union go through and FC Cincinnati go home, 1‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Evander 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 a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 110 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
1‑1 against Minnesota United FC, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Two goals and a mark of 7.80 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The offer from Seattle Sounders for Ender Echenique was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Cincinnati this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around FC Cincinnati they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.