46 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Anorthosis lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
17 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Clifford Aboagye and Anorthosis agree another 2 years.
Clifford Aboagye 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.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Andreas Chrysostomou. 1‑0 against AEL, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
In brief
Player ratingsThe game went through Babacar Dione — 7.69
The words a physio says slowly. 128 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Anorthosis is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Anorthosis this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Nils de Mol has improved at 27, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Nobody at Anorthosis 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Anorthosis they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The offer from Agia Napa for Stijn Middendorp 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Anorthosis this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.