“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Vorskla heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vorskla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
13 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vorskla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Chriso 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.
Squad28 Jun 2038
Denys Ndukve 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 86 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.
Player ratings2 Nov 2037
A first appearance Ihor Babenko will want to forget — 5.64
Everybody's debut is one of two stories and this was the other one. 5.64, and the only consolation available is that nobody's career has ever been decided by ninety minutes in a shirt he had just been given.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vorskla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
8.91. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad2 Nov 2037
Words at Vorskla training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alexandr Goryachkin 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 stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
The words a physio says slowly. 111 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.
“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 Vorskla, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vorskla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Jun 2037
Denys Ndukve 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.
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.