The words a physio says slowly. 82 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 instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
4 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Haythem Ayouni 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
In brief
SquadWords at Al-Jeel training over how hard people work
The mood at Al-Jeel has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al-Jeel lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
“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 The request is on a desk at Al-Jeel, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Al-Jeel have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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-Jeel 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. Ali Al-Mansour has just signed for Al-Jeel, and for once the answer mattered.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Al-Wehda will make the call about Nafea Al-Sumairi this week. Al-Jeel have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
The name of Rakan Al-Kaabi has come up in conversations Al-Jeel were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
The words a physio says slowly. 78 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.
“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 Al-Jeel, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings3 Jan 2028
A brace, and Erick Castro takes the afternoon — 8.21
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Erick Castro provided it, and the 8.21 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Haythem Ayouni 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.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Al-Jeel and Ohod, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
At 22 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.
A 3‑3 draw with Ohod leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Squad3 Jan 2028
The manager has not finished forgetting Abdullah Otayf's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Al-Jeel can pretend not to have heard.
David Idaiye 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.
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
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.
97 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al-Jeel 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. 62 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
David Idaiye 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.
In brief
The terracesAl-Jeel spend $360.0K on the signing the town wanted