The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Clermont Foot have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Samir Haribou is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Clermont Foot is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Yoann Salmier 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.
Successful dribbles: 21. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Words at Clermont Foot training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Áron Yaakobishvili 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.
$160.0K on the table at FC Nantes. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Maxence Soulet is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad7 Jun 2027
Luís Hemir falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Clermont Foot have made the call to Benfica. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
1 on the scoresheet on his first appearance and a mark of 7.73 beside it. Most debuts are got through; this one was enjoyed, by him and by everybody watching it.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Clermont Foot scored in the 92th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Théo Guivarch 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yoann Salmier was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 17 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Still no offer on the table, and Adrien Hunou’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.