“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Ararat have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ararat this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Realdo Fili 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.
A defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
Marked 8.06 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
“I watch every Ararat game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Pakhtakor runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ararat this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Ararat, and 4 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.
“Judge me on him.” Managers do not say that kind of thing by accident — it moves the pressure from Divine Ukadike’s shoulders onto his own, and both of them know it.