17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Penafiel lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Penafiel will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Jenson Jones did not need any: 7.64, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Tugra Turhan 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Jenson Jones has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
8.26. 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 25 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 32 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Kevin Barcella is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Joan Femenías 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.
Marked 8.21 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Penafiel know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The words a physio says slowly. 32 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 43 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Penafiel, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Penafiel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Pacos de Ferreira kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Penafiel will be asked about the last half hour all week.
Joan Femenías 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.
It needed Bryan Róchez to find the net to bring anything home at all: 3‑3 against Pacos de Ferreira, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.