“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 The request is on a desk at Persis, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Persis 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Egy Sulaeman trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Something was said to Zahran Alamsah and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Persis, another week without a signature from Alex Li.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Persis has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
“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 The request is on a desk at Persis, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Fairuz Ohorella will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Persis the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Dimitri 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Maximiliano Camargo is living that version at Persis, and it tends to show in the first month.
Nobody has barred the club from spending; it simply has nothing to spend that it has not first raised. Every incoming name comes with an outgoing one attached.
Squad16 Dec 2030
Words at Persis training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Teja Paku Alam 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Egy Sulaeman trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
46 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Persis lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persis can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Persis is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
“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; Persis are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Something was said to Teja Paku Alam and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Nobody at Persis will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The words a physio says slowly. 88 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Iksan Lestaluhu will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Persis the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Persis has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
95 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Persis lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Persis they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Dimitri 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.
Squad8 Oct 2029
5 new faces, and Persis are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Vukašin Vraneš is on it.