Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Boluspor will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
52 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Boluspor lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“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 The request is on a desk at Boluspor, and it is not being withdrawn.
“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 Boluspor know it.
Nobody at Boluspor will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Boluspor has been clear about where Derek Hernández stands, which is more than many ever get.
In brief
The dugoutRasheed Akanbi asks for a word with the manager
14 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.
Elias Dahman 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.
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.16, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
The dugout11 Dec 2028
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 Merih Soyuncu to a room that had heard them before.
Doğan Can Davas 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.
Boluspor asked and Fenerbahce said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“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; Boluspor are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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.
$2.5M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
He is going to Kasimpasa, the club has $2.5M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Doğan Can Davas 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.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Words at Boluspor training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Talisca 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 footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Derek Hernández has, at Boluspor, and the first month will show what that does to a man.