It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shaab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Al Shaab are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Danilo Catalano 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.
Nobody at Al Shaab will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Al Shaab know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
There were 89 minutes on the clock and Sharjah had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Al Shaab did not stop to explain themselves.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.38 for the rest of it.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mahmoud Al Hammadi is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Danilo Catalano 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 particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Fahad Obaid has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shaab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Al Shaab has been clear about where Khalfan Suqrat stands, which is more than many ever get.