Marked for Anastasios Mandalos
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market29 Apr 2030
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Egaleo is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad29 Apr 2030
Tempers go at Egaleo
Stefanos Souloukos 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.
Squad29 Apr 2030
Words at Egaleo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Žiga Korošec 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.
Boardroom29 Apr 2030
No signings allowed at Egaleo
The manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
Boardroom29 Apr 2030
The Egaleo debt reaches $18.8M
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
The dugout29 Apr 2030
Henry King knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Egaleo, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match22 Sep 2029
At last: Egaleo win one
18 matches without a win, and then this, against Hellas Syros. Relief is a strange noise in a football ground and it was the only noise at the end.
Boardroom24 Sep 2029
The club looked outside for a month, found nothing it preferred, and handed the job to the man who had been doing it anyway. He knows the building; now he has to prove he knows the rest.
Squad24 Sep 2029
Timothy Ček in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Egaleo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Sep 2029
Diter Đuričić gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Diter Đuričić has just signed for Egaleo, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad24 Sep 2029
Mouhamed Mbaye 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.
Match22 Sep 2029
A 1‑0 win over Hellas Syros, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad24 Sep 2029
The medical room confirms 35 days on the sidelines for Anastasios Mandalos, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Player ratings24 Sep 2029
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.11, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
The dugout24 Sep 2029
“That is what I want every week. Not the result, the way they went about it.” The manager, after 1‑0, already talking about the next one.