“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Chaves, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chaves 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.
9 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
1 error, one goal, and a night in front of the same three seconds. He will see it tonight, tomorrow and probably in February, and everybody who has played knows exactly which frame he keeps stopping on.
In brief
The terracesEverybody has an opinion about João Valido
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Chaves, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chaves this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadBruno Rodrigues falls out with a teammate over standards
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 66 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Chaves they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Gabriel Silva 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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Words at Chaves training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Demir Ege Tıknaz 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Groningen will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Ruben van Bommel 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.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Stije Resink 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.
7 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 91 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
The fee is $280.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Vitesse 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 Groningen this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Jun 2027
Younes Taha has improved at 24, 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.