Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Hapoel Raanana will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The 2-goal deficit was real and so was the recovery. Hidemasa Hasebe was at the centre of it, Bnei Yehuda were at the end of it, and everybody who left early will hear about this one for years.
7.89, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Hidemasa Hasebe. 4‑3 against Bnei Yehuda, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings9 Dec 2041
Hidemasa Hasebe was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.40. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hapoel Raanana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at Hapoel Raanana will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Hapoel Raanana, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
37 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hapoel Raanana 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.
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Isaac Oppong and Hapoel Raanana agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
51 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hapoel Raanana lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hapoel Raanana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Hapoel Tel Aviv held the lead for 3 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Hapoel Raanana answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
58 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hapoel Raanana lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.01 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Player ratings11 Feb 2041
Up for the corner, and Kento Morita delivers — 7.87
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Kento Morita scored, was marked 7.87, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Yoyo Aviv 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.
A 2‑1 win over Maccabi Netanya, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The words a physio says slowly. 33 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Hapoel Raanana will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hapoel Raanana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A touch he did not want, a bounce he could not have read, and his name in the wrong column. There is no consoling a man after one of these, and Hapoel Raanana will not try tonight.