“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Shooting Stars have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Shooting Stars is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Shooting Stars know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Sunday Ajayi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 58 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
Monsoor Saleh 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.” Stanley Kanu and Shooting Stars agree another 2 years.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Édouard Marchand after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Squad9 Oct 2034
Osayi Awoniyi 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.
9 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Shooting Stars 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. 8.25 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Monsoor Saleh 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.
Shooting Stars asked and Al Jazira said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
He is 18 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Daniel Awaziem 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.