The words a physio says slowly. 93 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Zamalek can pretend not to have heard.
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.
Idrissa Guèye 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 afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.84 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Match6 Sep 2036
Another one collected away from home
6 on the bounce on the road for Zamalek. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
The offer from El Dakhleya for Bassem Kahraba was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Telmo Arcanjo will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Zamalek the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zamalek this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Zamalek hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
In brief
SquadWords at Zamalek training over how hard people work
Player ratingsNinety minutes of Edmund Baidoo at his very best
Two goals and a mark of 10.00 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Two goals and a mark of 10.00 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.87 at 36, 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 Zamalek is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Akinkunmi Amoo 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.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Zamalek and El Dakhleya in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.