Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Mladost Lucani they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad12 Mar 2029
Words at Mladost Lucani training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mihailo Oreščanin 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 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 Mladost Lucani know it.
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.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Podillia have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The deal with Shakhtar is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Podillia had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Dynamo Kyiv, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ruslan Chernenko was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Podillia, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Podillia will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Volodymyr Rudiuk will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Podillia the goodbyes have quietly begun.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Denys Herasymenko is living that version at Podillia, and it tends to show in the first month.
This is not rotation. Vladyslav Shkinder has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Podillia is pretending otherwise.
Squad5 Jun 2028
Words at Podillia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ruslan Chernenko 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Podillia, another week without a signature from Volodymyr Rudiuk.