“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 The request is on a desk at Maccabi Tel Aviv, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Ben Lederman had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Maccabi Tel Aviv have gone to Bnei Sakhnin with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
$1.1M on the table at Bnei Sakhnin. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The offer went to Belgrano this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
$1.5M was the most the club would pay and Beitar Jerusalem were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $1.1M — a club that wants Matty Cudjoe enough to be asked twice.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
Maccabi Tel Aviv offered $12.3M; Konyaspor said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Maccabi Tel Aviv have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $1.1M — a club that wants Matty Cudjoe enough to be asked twice.
Osher Davida 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. Kristijan Belić 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.
$11.5M on the table at Konyaspor. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Maccabi Tel Aviv people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Bragantino keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Belgrano have kept their man, and Maccabi Tel Aviv go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Maccabi Tel Aviv, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The offer from Beitar Jerusalem for Elad Madmon was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Maccabi Tel Aviv heard it as anything else.
Mohamed Camara 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Osher Davida was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.