The words a physio says slowly. 33 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Karolis Valskis will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Trakai the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Uglješa Radinović and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Tomas Cernych is on it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Trakai they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Uglješa Radinović and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Tomas Cernych is on it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Trakai is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Uglješa Radinović and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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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.
Nobody at Trakai 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Trakai, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Two hours a week with a tutor, which is the least glamorous thing at Trakai and the one that decides whether a foreign signing is still here in two years.
Uglješa Radinović and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Siniša Babić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Trakai asked and Olympiacos said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Tomas Cernych is on it.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Trakai would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
Siauliai ended it 1‑5. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
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It finished 1-5. A cup exit is a disappointment; this was a public dismantling, and the difference between the two is the number of people who will still be talking about it in August.
6 goals in one match, Tomas Cernych on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Trakai and Siauliai.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Siniša Babić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Olimpija Ljubljana have kept their man, and Trakai go back to a list with one name crossed off it.