“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Hatayspor have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Tunahan Taşçı and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad17 May 2032
Words at Hatayspor training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Arda Erdursun 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.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Hatayspor will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Sinan Dervisoglu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The words a physio says slowly. 26 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.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Hatayspor people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 10 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
“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 The request is on a desk at Hatayspor, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Hatayspor have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
10 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Hatayspor and Besiktas in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
49 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hatayspor lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Prince Ating will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Hatayspor the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Tunahan Taşçı and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
1‑3 to Basaksehir, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad29 Dec 2031
Moussa Diarra 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.
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hatayspor lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
1‑5 against Alanyaspor, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Hatayspor they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 17 combined actions and a mark of 7.04, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Yasir Subaşı 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.