It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Debrecen this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
20 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 terraces3 Sep 2035
The mood at Debrecen has turned into something else
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Debrecen will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Álex Bermejo reports back to Debrecen with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Debrecen this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Debrecen lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Debrecen will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Đorđe Gordić 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Debrecen this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Apr 2035
Josua Mejías 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Debrecen can pretend not to have heard.
Álex Bermejo 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jorge Aguirre trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
In brief
SquadLaszlo Nagy has become a man the manager trusts
The mood at Debrecen has turned into something else
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Debrecen 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 Debrecen this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Feb 2035
Donny De Roon 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.
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.
14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Debrecen lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Álex Bermejo 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 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.
Đorđe Gordić 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.
Squad4 Sep 2034
Words at Debrecen training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Josua Mejías 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 22 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Bogdán Bánhegyi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Debrecen the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Debrecen this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
8 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Squad31 Jul 2034
Words at Debrecen training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Csanád Vilmos Dénes 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Zoltan Szalai is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Janos Fiola 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Attila Bese is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.