34 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. FC Dallas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at FC Dallas is running low.
Daniel 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.
The mood at FC Dallas 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.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Dallas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around FC Dallas they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
He is 17, and nobody at FC Dallas signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
The mood at FC Dallas 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.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 13 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Dallas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
7 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at FC Dallas can tell you which week it ends in.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around FC Dallas they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Dallas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Daniel 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.