Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Ta'ee they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al-Ta'ee is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Basil Al-Hassan reports back to Al-Ta'ee with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
“I watch every Al-Ta'ee game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Al-Shoulla runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Al-Ta'ee have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
Add another name to the list: Al-Mojzel have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Safwan Al-Johani. The answer from Al-Ta'ee has not changed — yet.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Al-Mojzel will make the call about Abdulaziz Al-Alawi this week. Al-Ta'ee have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Al-Ta'ee, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The name of Törles Knöll has come up in conversations Al-Ta'ee were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Al-Ta'ee, another week without a signature from Dino Halilović.
In brief
The terracesSupporters make their feelings known about Törles Knöll