14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stromsgodset lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Alan Cole will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Stromsgodset the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Kristian Eriksen 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 20 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mads Kikkenborg was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stromsgodset lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 8.51 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Isak Helstad Amundsen will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Stromsgodset the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Alan Cole 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.
31 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Stromsgodset lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
At 20 he has spent a month being better than everybody his age in the league, which is a different and harder thing than one good afternoon. Stromsgodset will try very hard not to make too much of it.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout6 May 2030
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Stefan Odegaard left the room before anybody could ask which.
38 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stromsgodset lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stromsgodset this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
46 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Stromsgodset lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Stromsgodset can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Stromsgodset they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Kristian Eriksen 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mads Kikkenborg was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.