It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Shafa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Nahid Əliyev signs something — a contract at Shafa or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Position 5 on 23 points, and the places that carry a European ticket are close enough to count. Seasons like this are decided by two results in April, and the club knows which two.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Shafa, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Shafa is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Nobody at Shafa 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.
Cristian Marai 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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Shafa, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Shafa. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The standards have slipped, and in a building where everybody watches everybody it has not gone unremarked. This is how a player loses a place before he loses one.
Cristian Marai 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Fera trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The least glamorous thing a foreign signing ever does and the one that decides most of them. A player who can hear the shout behind him is a different footballer from one who cannot.
A few words of the language, a friend at the next peg, and a training ground that has stopped feeling foreign. Nothing measurable, and everything visible on Saturdays.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Shafa 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 Shafa, and it is not being withdrawn.
Vladimir Petrovic and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Shafa will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ruslan Əliyev was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $5.6M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
Signings arrive with a picture of the club in their head, and this one’s picture was bigger than the building. He will play well and he will be gone, in that order, and everybody knows it.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Position 4, 31 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.