The words a physio says slowly. 17 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.
Izzatullo Abdulhaqov 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.
Squad25 Feb 2036
Words at Mashal training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dan Glazer 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.
99 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Mashal lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Amir Suyunov damages knee ligaments — 107 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 107 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.
Izzatullo Abdulhaqov 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 shortfall was covered from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be relieved and entitled to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings usually arrive together.
In brief
SquadWords at Mashal training over how hard people work
Words at Mashal training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Izzatullo Abdulhaqov 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.
Jamshidbek Toshmuhammadov 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 clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al-Hilal is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Sergej Milinković-Savić 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.
The manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Al-Hilal, and both men came out saying it was fine.