68 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Katsina United 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.
The whole football department in one room on a weekday morning. Nothing was announced afterwards, which is what a board announces when it has run out of patience.
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.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Calvin Ogunjobi and Katsina United agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
A change in the dugout is not one story, it is twenty-five of them. This is Calvin Lookman's: he was somebody's player, and now he has to be somebody else's, starting from nothing.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Abidemi Alli signs something — a contract at Katsina United or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
113 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Katsina United lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Yusuf Omotayo 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Emmanuel Bakare was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Etebo Onyekuru trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The mood at Katsina United 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Katsina United will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Katsina United can pretend not to have heard.
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.
Benjamin Asiedu Kwesi 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.