It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Balzan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Philip Grech is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Nobody at Balzan will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Simon Schembri has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
In brief
The dugoutBjorn Gauci knocks on the manager's door
The words a physio says slowly. 18 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.
The clubs have shaken hands with Zabbar St. Patrick; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 8 arrived, 7 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Mattia Veselji 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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 13 actions, 6.71, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
10 days with the chair empty, a list of names that grows and shrinks by the day, and not one signature on anything. Every week that passes takes the best candidates off it.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.