17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ventspils lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 The request is on a desk at Ventspils, and it is not being withdrawn.
Teddy Bishop 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.
In brief
SquadAlvis Jaunzems falls out with a teammate over standards
The words a physio says slowly. 24 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.
Position 2, 25 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Fabricio: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Fabricio 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.
Squad30 Jul 2029
Gary Tello 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Leonardo Draguzet has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.