A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
“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 The request is on a desk at Charlotte Football Club, and it is not being withdrawn.
Christian Olivares 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Bart van Rooij was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Christian Wright has, at Charlotte Football Club, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Kenyel Michel has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Charlotte Football Club have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Add another name to the list: DC United have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Alec Smir. The answer from Charlotte Football Club has not changed — yet.
In brief
Transfer targetsA loan move for Antonio Carrera is in the works
Transfer targetsA loan move for Majed Abdullah is in the works
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dagur Dan Þórhallsson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CF Montreal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
6 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at CF Montreal. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one CF Montreal will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
In brief
MarketThe clock does Paul Rothrock’s negotiating for him
The dugoutJack Landreth knocks on the manager's door
Dagur Dan Þórhallsson 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.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 34 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for CF Montreal is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Will Ostrander was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
2 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee CF Montreal could ask drops and the wages Sebastián Arce can ask rise.
39 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CF Montreal lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
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.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at CF Montreal. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
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 words a physio says slowly. 21 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.
Dagur Dan Þórhallsson 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 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.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at CF Montreal. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.