The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Birkirkara is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Birkirkara can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Birkirkara this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Nobody at Birkirkara 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Shaun Dimech was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Birkirkara they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Zach Muscat 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 fixture the rest of the division is looking forward to more than either of the sides in it. Both know a win changes the season and a defeat does not end it, which is what makes it hard to play.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Words at Birkirkara training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luquinha 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.
Nobody at Birkirkara 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 have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nottingham Forest can pretend not to have heard.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.87 for the rest of it.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Aaron Bott has agreed terms with Cambridge United for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Aaron Bott will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Nottingham Forest the goodbyes have quietly begun.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.