The tie is over and the right side of it is theirs. 2‑1 on the night, a dressing room that will not come down for a day and a half, and a next round nobody has thought about yet.
The words a physio says slowly. 26 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.
Lucas Herrington 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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 11 actions, 7.66, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
110 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Colorado Rapids lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Colorado Rapids 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 had been thinking. Ian Glavinovich 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.
16 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 27 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.81 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Colorado Rapids is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Sydney Wathuta has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad14 May 2040
Darren Yapi 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.
Dante Sealy 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.
Nobody at Colorado Rapids 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ian Glavinovich 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.
Dante Sealy 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Walker Turner and Colorado Rapids agree another 4 years.
74 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Colorado Rapids lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 58 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Colorado Rapids have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
In brief
SquadWords at Colorado Rapids training over how hard people work
95 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Colorado Rapids lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 79 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. DeAndre Johnson has just signed for Colorado Rapids, and for once the answer mattered.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 21 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
15 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.