“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 The request is on a desk at Nasarawa United, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Timothy Zechariah 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.
Ojo Johnson and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Joshua Ebuehi and Nasarawa United agree another 3 years.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Umar Ada is on it.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Olisa Lawal after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Nasarawa United they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Peter Moffi did not need any: 8.57, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nasarawa United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Marked 8.16 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nasarawa United 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.
Ojo Johnson and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Taiwo Ekong has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Terem Awoniyi has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ebere Iheanacho is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 54 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Frank Eze provided it, and the 8.50 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Timothy Zechariah was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Mamady Condé and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
At 17 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 91. Kano Pillars had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
6 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ojo Johnson will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Nasarawa United the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Umar Ada and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Timothy Zechariah 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Nasarawa United can tell you which week it ends in.