The words a physio says slowly. 88 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Piast will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Piast can tell you which week it ends in.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Quentin Boisgard signs something — a contract at Piast or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Piast have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Nüraly Älip 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Carlos Mosquera 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Piast this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Kamil Jakóbczyk is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Grzegorz Tomasiewicz 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.
“I watch every Piast game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Gornik Zabrze runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Quentin Boisgard signs something — a contract at Piast or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nüraly Älip 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 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Grzegorz Tomasiewicz. 1‑0 against Slask, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Going 2 down does something to a side, and what it usually does is finish them. Not here. Lech rebuilt the afternoon goal by goal, and Cracovia had no answer to any of it.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.05 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lech this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Robert Gumny 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.
Marked 8.58 — 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.