Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Persebaya will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Persebaya have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Persebaya this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad1 Oct 2029
Words at Persebaya training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ernando Ari 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Persebaya can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
8 goals in 28 games at Borneo — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Persebaya updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Every squad is half players the manager chose and half players he inherited. Iarley Alayo was chosen, the man who chose him has gone, and he starts again from nothing under the next one.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Persebaya has been clear about where Aqil Savik stands, which is more than many ever get.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.82 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The accounts are being read more closely than the results. Wages before ambition is the order of business now, and the manager has been told so.
Squad30 Jul 2029
Words at Persebaya training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jefferson 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Mihailo Perović. 1‑0 against Dewa United, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.09 — 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Persebaya are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Persebaya is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Francisco Rivera 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 May 2029
Jefferson 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Persebaya are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The dugout28 May 2029
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Andri Darmawan to a room that had heard them before.
Successful dribbles: 43. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Persebaya scored in the 107th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Player ratings21 May 2029
Fachri Putra, 15, plays like he has been here for years — 8.51
A mark of 8.51 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 15-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Persebaya this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 May 2029
Jefferson 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.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.55 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jefferson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 21 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Andri Darmawan on a 3‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Risto Mitrevski 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jefferson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Persebaya know it.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
The dugout19 Mar 2029
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Andri Darmawan chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. PSM defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.