19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Borussia Dortmund lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The offer from St. Pauli for Daniel Svensson was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Dortmund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Emre Can 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 words a physio says slowly. 27 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.
Serhou Guirassy 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Cole Campbell is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“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 Borussia Dortmund hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
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.
24 appearances and 0 goals away from here, and a player the manager did not have in August. Loans are sent out hoping for exactly this and most of them do not deliver it.
The words a physio says slowly. 36 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Borussia Dortmund, and it is not being withdrawn.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 Borussia Dortmund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Edmund Baidoo is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
He is 15, and nobody at Borussia Dortmund signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Borussia Dortmund have paid $35.7M for Omar El Hilali, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
The words a physio says slowly. 43 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.
Manchester City paid $28.6M and Borussia Dortmund took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Omar El Hilali is living that version at Borussia Dortmund, and it tends to show in the first month.
Felix Nmecha 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.
Heidenheim paid $1.0M and Borussia Dortmund took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.