Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Siauliai will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
34 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Siauliai lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Siauliai can pretend not to have heard.
“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 The request is on a desk at Siauliai, and it is not being withdrawn.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Donatas Klimavicius and Siauliai agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Siauliai this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Suduva will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Žygimantas Baltrūnas has pre-agreed a move to Siauliai, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Siauliai, another week without a signature from Célio.
Vikintas Slavickas 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.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Siauliai know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
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.