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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Inter 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Samir Mammadov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Inter the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Javid Nazarov 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Francisco Uviedo 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.
Every long career reaches the week the player starts thinking about the last one. He would like it to be at the club that first put him on a pitch, and Inter now know that too.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Inter know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
In brief
MarketThe window shut and Asion Daja is still in the building
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Inter can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Inter this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Koshiro Sumi has just signed for Inter, and for once the answer mattered.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Joni Montiel has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Inter have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Nobody at the club will say out loud who this signing is for, which is how you know exactly who it is for. Koshiro Sumi has been brought in to take a shirt somebody is still wearing.
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 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Inter have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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 Inter this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Inter this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ayrton Unzueta has just signed for Inter, and for once the answer mattered.
Neftchi will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Edvin Kuč has pre-agreed a move to Inter, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
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 dressing room knows how to read a signing like this one. Ayrton Unzueta is not here to sit and wait indefinitely, and the man whose place he has been bought to take knows it better than anyone.
“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 Inter, and 0 appearances in 22 say he has earned the hearing.