64 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Military Production lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
12 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Military Production has to find a result from somewhere.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 10 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
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.
108 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Military Production lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
0‑3 to Zamalek, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Military Production has to find a result from somewhere.
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.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Military Production this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Noble Rumsey has his answer from Military Production; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Abdallah Trezeguet is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.