“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Casa Pia can pretend not to have heard.
Héctor Hernández 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 Sporting CP this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Add another name to the list: Portimonense have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Issa Doumbia. The answer from Sporting CP has not changed — yet.
Marked 8.76 — 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.
Shots: 14. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
The fee is $21.5M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Famalicao drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 32 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
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.
He is 19, he is averaging 7.38, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sporting CP this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Pote 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Zeno Debast trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sporting CP this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The fee is $28.6M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Braga drove a hard bargain; time will say who won 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 Sporting CP this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Add another name to the list: Chaves have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Manuel Simões. The answer from Sporting CP has not changed — yet.
A season average of 7.88 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Sporting CP know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sporting CP have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The offer from Arouca for Diogo Martins 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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Sporting CP heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sporting CP this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The name of José Mendes has come up in conversations Sporting CP were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sporting CP this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 9.18 — 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.
Position 2, 32 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking 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 Sporting CP this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.45 — 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.