“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Porto have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Arthur Avom Ebong 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.
Squad18 Dec 2045
Rodrigo Mora 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Porto know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
1‑0 against Utrecht, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Andre Ferreira was at the centre of the description.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match9 Dec 2045
Andre Ferreira wins it after the whistle should have gone
91 minutes played. Andre Ferreira found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Tondela went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
The 89th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Andre Ferreira decided nobody was going anywhere. Utrecht had no time left to answer.
Two goals and a mark of 8.86 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Porto they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Porto have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Arthur Avom Ebong 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.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Andre Silva reports back to Porto with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Marked 9.62 — 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.
28 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Porto lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 15 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
“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 Porto, and it is not being withdrawn.
William Gomes 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ayyoub Bouaddi 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Porto will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Rodrigo Mora had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Maritimo were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.97 at 38, and nobody on the pitch was better.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Porto this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Javier Bravo will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Porto the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.