Johan Murillo 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.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Words at Barranquilla training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nicolás Casa 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.
The phone has started ringing about Cristian Santander again, and this time the name on the line is Persepolis. Barranquilla are listening politely and promising nothing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Barranquilla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Nicolás Casa 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Barranquilla know it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Barranquilla is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
José Luis Caicedo 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.
Squad1 May 2028
Words at Barranquilla training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sebastián Guerra 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Barranquilla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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 is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Barranquilla has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Barranquilla, another week without a signature from Yesid García.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Barranquilla will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Benjamin Machini has just signed for Barranquilla, and for once the answer mattered.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and William Mosquera reports back to Barranquilla with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
José Luis Caicedo 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. César Bravo will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Barranquilla the goodbyes have quietly begun.
4 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.
Gilbert Bandama 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.
A season average of 7.02 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Hapoel Kfar Saba know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Hapoel Kfar Saba know it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Konadu Yiadom 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.
Position 12 and 13 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
The 87th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Jubayer Bushnak decided nobody was going anywhere. Hapoel Acre had no time left to answer.
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Player ratings13 Dec 2027
Gilbert Bandama, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.88
A mark of 7.88 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Hapoel Kfar Saba 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 Hapoel Kfar Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A season average of 7.00 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Hapoel Kfar Saba know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Squad13 Dec 2027
Konadu Yiadom 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 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Hapoel Kfar Saba has to find a result from somewhere.
0‑3 against Maccabi Tel Aviv, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Hapoel Kfar Saba can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Hapoel Kfar Saba is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Ben Lederman 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.
Squad15 Nov 2027
Niv Vaknin 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.
“I watch every Hapoel Kfar Saba game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at PSM runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Gilbert Bandama did not need any: 8.33, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Hapoel Kfar Saba has to find a result from somewhere.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Hapoel Kfar Saba 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 Hapoel Kfar Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Konadu Yiadom 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Benjamin Machini will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Hapoel Kfar Saba the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Gilbert Bandama and Hapoel Kfar Saba agree another 5 years.
Ben Lederman 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.
At 20 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Hapoel Kfar Saba, and 1 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Hapoel Kfar Saba is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hapoel Kfar Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
33 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hapoel Kfar Saba lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Hapoel Kfar Saba can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Hapoel Kfar Saba is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Ben Lederman 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.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
The words a physio says slowly. 41 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 name of Mohammed Galadima has come up in conversations Hapoel Kfar Saba were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Gilbert Bandama 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. Konadu Yiadom 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.
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The words a physio says slowly. 57 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.
“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 Hapoel Kfar Saba, and it is not being withdrawn.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Mohammed Galadima 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.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Ben Lederman has improved at 27, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
The phone has started ringing about Ben Sørensen again, and this time the name on the line is Kokand 1912. Hapoel Kfar Saba are listening politely and promising nothing.
5 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Benjamin Machini has his answer from Hapoel Kfar Saba; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The words a physio says slowly. 66 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Hapoel Kfar Saba will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Benjamin Machini will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Hapoel Kfar Saba the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hapoel Kfar Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The words a physio says slowly. 80 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.
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $320.0K has been paid because Yuval Piven is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
Ben Lederman 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.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Yuval Piven from Bnei Yehuda for $320.0K, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
Squad14 Jun 2027
Konadu Yiadom 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.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Hapoel Kfar Saba can pretend not to have heard.
Ben Lederman 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 chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
“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 Hapoel Kfar Saba, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hapoel Kfar Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Hapoel Kfar Saba know it.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Mohammed Galadima is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Hapoel Kfar Saba has been clear about where Benjamin Machini stands, which is more than many ever get.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Maccabi Petach Tikva? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.