Marked for Ignacio Ramírez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Dec 2035
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad24 Dec 2035
Tempers go at Molde
Evangelos Patoulidis 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.
Squad24 Dec 2035
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market12 Mar 2035
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market12 Mar 2035
“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 The request is on a desk at Molde, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad12 Mar 2035
Tempers go at Molde
Isak Helstad Amundsen 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.
Squad12 Mar 2035
Words at Molde training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sondre Granaas 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.
Squad12 Mar 2035
“The easiest signature of my career.” Ignacio Ramírez and Molde agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad12 Mar 2035
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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad13 Nov 2034
Stian Sjøvold damages knee ligaments — 44 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 44 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.
Squad13 Nov 2034
Birk Risa keeps the receipts
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Molde may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad13 Nov 2034
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad6 Nov 2034
Stian Sjøvold damages knee ligaments — 51 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 51 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.
Market6 Nov 2034
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Molde heard it as anything else.
Squad6 Nov 2034
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Caleb Zady Sery commits to Molde for another 2 years.
Squad6 Nov 2034
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad6 Nov 2034
Elias Hoff Melkersen 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.
Boardroom6 Nov 2034
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Óscar Alcócer has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Molde have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Market6 Nov 2034
Ignacio Ramírez is 20, and Molde have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Market6 Nov 2034
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Molde, another week without a signature from Pietro Arnaboldi.
Market6 Nov 2034
Contract settled, hands shaken, no fee changing hands. Eirik Haugan leaves Molde the quiet way, and the wage bill breathes a little easier.
In brief
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Boardroom
Molde keep producing them
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Boardroom
The Molde board choose calm