Mamoutou Berthé 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Plateau United can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Plateau United is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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 is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
He looks like a man who lives here now rather than one who is working here. It took most of a season, and at Plateau United the difference is visible from the back of the stand.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Shooting Stars the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Plateau United will enjoy reviewing.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Plateau United have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 5 arrived, 16 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
The deal that would have taken Pedel Madaki to Enyimba has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Plateau United with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
Plateau United asked and Universitatea Craiova said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Israel Oladeji was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.