The words a physio says slowly. 15 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Nasr will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The words a physio says slowly. 22 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Nasr will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Al Nasr have had the benefit of it.
The words a physio says slowly. 29 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Nasr will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al Nasr they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
In brief
SquadMarouan Azarkan falls out with a teammate over standards
The words a physio says slowly. 36 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Nasr will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 The request is on a desk at Al Nasr, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Lee Kyung-hyun will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Al Nasr the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Ramiz Zerrouki 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 words a physio says slowly. 43 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Nasr will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Al Nasr have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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.
Two goals and a mark of 9.25 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Nasr will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.10 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
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 in one match, Ori Hemed on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Al Nasr and Al Ahli.
110 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al Nasr lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Nasr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Eitan Solomon is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Luca Castillo wants continental football; whether Al Nasr can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.