It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ravan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Ravan can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Charlie Carter was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Ravan know it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Charlie Carter 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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
1 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Ravan could ask drops and the wages Zakhar Yevdachev can ask rise.
9 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Ravan and Qarabag in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Maksym Pietrzak 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.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Qarabag have kept their man, and Ravan go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Araz Guseynov has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.