Andrija Živković 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
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.
Nobody at PAOK 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” PAOK have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The offer from Montana for Dimitris Chatsidis 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.
The name of Lukas Ramil Sauer has come up in conversations PAOK were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“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; PAOK are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Lucas Pérez has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Dimitris Giannoulis signs something — a contract at PAOK or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Nikos Marinakis is on it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PAOK will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The shirt still fits. Marios Siabanis is back at PAOK, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around PAOK they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Dimitris Giannoulis 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Baba Rahman was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Romain Amalfitano has his answer from PAOK; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PAOK will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at PAOK hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The phone has started ringing about Dimitris Chatsidis again, and this time the name on the line is Asteras. PAOK are listening politely and promising nothing.
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.