35 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Legia lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Legia they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Legia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Robert Rolland is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Add another name to the list: Wisla Krakow have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Ilija Pantelin. The answer from Legia has not changed — yet.
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
17 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Legia is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Ondřej Lingr 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.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Ondřej Lingr.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
68 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. AJ Auxerre lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at AJ Auxerre hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad12 Jun 2034
Clément Akpa 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.
Ryan Rodin 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.