The words a physio says slowly. 102 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.
20 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around PSBS Biak they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSBS Biak this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PSBS Biak lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at PSBS Biak is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
10 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSBS Biak this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Mar 2040
Words at PSBS Biak training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohammed Saeed 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.
Persib held the lead for 1 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. PSBS Biak answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PSBS Biak lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSBS Biak this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Esteban Zurita. 3‑1 against Madura United, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings5 Mar 2040
Mohammed Saeed was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.32. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
In brief
SquadWords at PSBS Biak training over how hard people work
28 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PSBS Biak 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 PSBS Biak this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
9 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Squad27 Feb 2040
Words at PSBS Biak training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohammed Saeed 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.
9 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
35 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PSBS Biak lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at PSBS Biak is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Kevin López 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.
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.