The words a physio says slowly. 58 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Rudar Velenje, and it is not being withdrawn.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Rudar Velenje will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings28 Jul 2031
A brace, and Jules Collet takes the afternoon — 8.34
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Jules Collet provided it, and the 8.34 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.99 for the rest of it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Rudar Velenje have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Everything agreed with Olimpija Ljubljana, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
65 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rudar Velenje lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Rudar Velenje will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 The request is on a desk at Rudar Velenje, and it is not being withdrawn.
The deal with Olimpija Ljubljana is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
4 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.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Miha Cerin has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Filip Bijol has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
72 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Rudar Velenje lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Rudar Velenje will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Olimpija Ljubljana have kept their man, and Rudar Velenje go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jure Zupan was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 38, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
Rudar Velenje have made the call to Olimpija Ljubljana. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
In brief
The dugoutTai Matea Panić has become a man the manager trusts