The words a physio says slowly. 14 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Novatus Miroshi 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.
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Umraniyespor lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Umraniyespor have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Umraniyespor 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.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Sakaryaspor in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Umraniyespor. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 11 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
28 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Umraniyespor lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
0‑4 to Kasimpasa, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Cebio Soukou and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad13 Nov 2028
Words at Umraniyespor training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tomislav Glumac 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.