Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
124 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Borussia Mönchengladbach lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Giovanni Reyna 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.
41 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Armin Sivić 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.
22 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Borussia Mönchengladbach has to find a result from somewhere.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.84 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Mönchengladbach this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Oct 2039
Veit Stange 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.
14 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 22 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.
42 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Giovanni Reyna 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Borussia Mönchengladbach is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Lukas Jäger has agreed terms with St. Pauli for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Four paragraphs on the club website, none of them about football. The board thanked him, wished him well, and had the search under way before the page went up.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Not an interim appointment — an institution with an empty coaching office. Somebody unfamiliar will run the sessions this week, and the question of how a club gets into this state is one the board will be asked and will not answer.
“Somebody picks the team on Saturday. This week it is me, and that is as far as I have thought.” No promises were made in either direction, which is how these usually begin.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Borussia Mönchengladbach can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Mönchengladbach this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Armin Sivić and Borussia Mönchengladbach agree another 2 years.
Squad8 Aug 2039
Veit Stange 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Borussia Mönchengladbach have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Giovanni Reyna 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Borussia Mönchengladbach is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
36 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
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.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Borussia Mönchengladbach interviewed the field and appointed the corridor: Interim Coach keeps the job he had been doing in all but title. Sometimes the safest pair of hands is the one already holding the wheel.
Two goals and a mark of 8.65 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Borussia Mönchengladbach may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Borussia Mönchengladbach this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Veit Stange 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.
563 appearances across 11 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Giovanni Reyna 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.
Day 37 of the vacancy. Candidates have been priced, sounded out and quietly ruled out — and the caretaker’s win ratio is becoming an argument all by itself.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Borussia Mönchengladbach they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ridle Baku 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.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Borussia Mönchengladbach and Eintracht Frankfurt, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.