Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Wadi Degla 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 Wadi Degla can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Wadi Degla they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Masr El Makasa keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Mees Kaandorp 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Haras El Hodoud have kept their man, and Wadi Degla go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The new man at Wadi Degla has worked with Ibrahim El Mohamady before and it went well. He arrives with a view of the player already formed, which is worth more than any pre-season.
In brief
SquadWalid Soliman falls out with a teammate over standards
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Wadi Degla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
4 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Wadi Degla can tell you which week it ends in.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mohamed Hamdi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
In brief
Boardroom$690.1K taken back off the Wadi Degla table
Position 18 and 8 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Ahmed Gaber reports back to Wadi Degla with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Wadi Degla have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ibrahim El Mohamady did not need any: 7.62, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Salah Trezeguet will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Wadi Degla the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Mees Kaandorp 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.
12 days with the chair empty, a list of names that grows and shrinks by the day, and not one signature on anything. Every week that passes takes the best candidates off it.
Wadi Degla asked and El Masry said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
17 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 12 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Police Union waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Wadi Degla is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Wadi Degla can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Wadi Degla is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
In brief
Transfer targetsNo thanks: Ahmed Tarek rejects the move
9 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.
Ismaily go through and Wadi Degla go home, 1‑2 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Position 18 and 3 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Bassem Sobhi did not need any: 7.68, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Salah Trezeguet will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Wadi Degla the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad21 Nov 2033
Mees Kaandorp falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Successful dribbles: 20. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Teo Merlo will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Wadi Degla the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Wadi Degla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Oussama Daibeche was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Wadi Degla. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Wadi Degla will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
90 graduates, from a department now rated 9 out of 20. Nothing about the academy appears in a result, and nothing about the club’s future exists without it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Wadi Degla is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Successful dribbles: 24. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Mees Kaandorp 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.
3 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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 12 actions, 6.95, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
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 given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Wadi Degla know it.
In brief
The dugoutthe manager answers for it
The dugoutShikabala Zaki asks for a word with the manager