The words a physio says slowly. 132 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
The club looked outside for a month, found nothing it preferred, and handed the job to the man who had been doing it anyway. He knows the building; now he has to prove he knows the rest.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Ibrahim Warda and Masr El Makasa agree another 3 years.
Ali Hegazi 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.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Mohamed Ashraf has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Masr El Makasa have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Simón Méndez has just signed for Masr El Makasa, and for once the answer mattered.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Masr El Makasa 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.
He is 20, and nobody at Masr El Makasa signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
In brief
Player ratingsAhmed Fathy changes it off the bench
The offer from El Dakhleya for Abdallah El Nenny was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Masr El Makasa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Masr El Makasa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daouda Doumbia 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.
At 19 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.
The fee is $110.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. ENPPI drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Ali Hegazi 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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Words at Masr El Makasa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mahmoud Soliman 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.
It needed Abdallah El Nenny to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Police Union, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The words a physio says slowly. 16 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Ali Hegazi 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.
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.
82 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Masr El Makasa lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 45 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Masr El Makasa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.