20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Naxxar Lions lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Naxxar Lions can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Andrius Kuklys is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Naxxar Lions this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Aug 2028
JP Iseppe has improved at 27, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
27 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Naxxar Lions lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jamie Azzopardi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Naxxar Lions the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Matteo Ruggiero is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Yeangel Montero 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.
At 31 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Brynjar Gauti Guðjónsson arrives at 36 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
The words a physio says slowly. 35 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 agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Naxxar Lions is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Naxxar Lions this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The words a physio says slowly. 42 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Paul Weissensteiner is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
At 29 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
The phone has started ringing about Juan Hernández again, and this time the name on the line is Sliema Wanderers. Naxxar Lions are listening politely and promising nothing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Naxxar Lions this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Vitinho signs something — a contract at Naxxar Lions or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.