“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persib can pretend not to have heard.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ikenna Motors will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Persib the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Ahmad Arhan has agreed terms with PSIM for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
9 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
“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 The request is on a desk at Persib, and it is not being withdrawn.
Uilliam Barros 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.
Persib asked and Persija said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Persib, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Persib people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persib can pretend not to have heard.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ikenna Motors will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Persib the goodbyes have quietly begun.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Saddil Ramdani is living that version at Persib, and it tends to show in the first month.
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Saddil Ramdani is a Persib player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
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.
“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 Persib, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Pablo Ganet will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Persib 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 Persib this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pablo Ganet was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Persib, and both men came out saying it was fine.
In brief
MarketThe clock does Pablo Ganet’s negotiating for him
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persib can pretend not to have heard.
Uilliam Barros 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.
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
“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 Persib, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Resky Fandi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Persib the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Uilliam Barros and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad30 Sep 2030
Words at Persib training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Layvin Kurzawa 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Uilliam Barros signs something — a contract at Persib or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Resky Fandi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
54 graduates, from a department now rated 11 out of 20. Nothing about the academy appears in a result, and nothing about the club’s future exists without it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Persib they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad23 Sep 2030
Words at Persib training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pablo Ganet 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.
Moussa Sidibé 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.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Persib pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and PSBS Biak waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Persib is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Persib can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.64 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
Marked 7.84 at 18, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Boardroom2 Sep 2030
Deadline passes with 19 signed and 24 gone
That is the business done at Persib until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Persib they have already started talking about him in the past tense.