“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Besiktas 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 Besiktas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ahmet Gunok will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Besiktas the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad28 Jun 2038
Words at Besiktas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yusuf Akçiçek 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.
72 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Besiktas 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 Besiktas they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Sofiane Diop 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 bid was some way short and Besiktas did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad31 Aug 2037
Words at Besiktas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yusuf Akçiçek 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.
Marked 8.45 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Sofiane Diop damages knee ligaments — 163 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 163 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.
The offer from Fatih Karagumruk for Ernest Muçi 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.
There are signings and there are signings that come with a second helping of satisfaction. Besiktas have taken Anastasios Diamantakos from a club they measure themselves against, and the pleasure of that will outlast the transfer window.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Besiktas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Anastasios Diamantakos is living that version at Besiktas, and it tends to show in the first month.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Galatasaray will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Antony 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 interest is real enough to have reached print. Galatasaray have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad8 Jun 2037
Words at Galatasaray training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ladislav Krejčí 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.