It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSKA Sofia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Mar 2042
Words at CSKA Sofia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alessandro Citi 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.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.10 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The offer from CSKA 1948 for Kristian Bozhikov was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Simone Tronchin 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 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.
It is sentimental, it is completely genuine, and it is the beginning of a departure nobody has announced. The club can be gracious about it or it can pretend not to have heard.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Dedryck Lukaku: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
“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 The request is on a desk at CSKA Sofia, and it is not being withdrawn.
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.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.86 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
7.73, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSKA Sofia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad25 Nov 2041
Words at CSKA Sofia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alessandro Citi 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSKA Sofia 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; CSKA Sofia are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Diego Rossi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around CSKA Sofia the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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 CSKA Sofia, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad24 Jun 2041
Words at CSKA Sofia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alessandro Citi 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.
Diego Rossi 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 manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 34 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at CSKA Sofia is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSKA Sofia 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.