“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 The request is on a desk at Al-Saudi Al-Watani, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Abdulrahman Al-Harthi 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al-Saudi Al-Watani 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 17, and nobody at Al-Saudi Al-Watani signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Position 14, 24 points, and a crowd that arrives already braced. Relegation seasons are lost in exactly this atmosphere, and everybody who has lived through one recognises it immediately.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Obod can pretend not to have heard.
The fee is $170.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Bukhara drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Abubakr-Rizo Turdialiyev 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. Ulugbek Urunov 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.
39 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Obod lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Obod 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 Obod this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Youssef El Omari 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.
“I watch every Obod game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Qizilqum runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.