The words a physio says slowly. 20 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.
Santino Sciacqua 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.
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matteo Gualandris is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The borrowing is past what the bank agreed, which is the line where a debt stops being how football is financed and starts being a problem. Every phone-in in this town will quote the figure for the next five years.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Audace Cerignola will make the call about Viktor Pyankov this week. Lecco have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Lecco will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.98 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Guillaume Furrer 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Lecco, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Lecco is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lecco this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Enrico Nova is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.