Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 101 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at OFI this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giannis Christopoulos 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Lorenzo Dickmann is on it.
Nobody writes a headline about a tutor. Nobody has to be told, either, what happens to a signing who spends two years being the man nobody can talk to at lunch.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason OFI will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at OFI 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Lorenzo Dickmann is on it.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
33 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. OFI lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
1 for Giorgos Kanellopoulos, marked 7.66, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Thiago Nuss 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 point taken on 98 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
It needed Giorgos Kanellopoulos to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against AEK, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Yoël Armougom 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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. OFI will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Kostas Kostoulas was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Leonidas Galanopoulos after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 144 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what OFI can pretend not to have heard.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.88 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.94, and 2 involvements.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about OFI and Panserraikos in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 160 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
The offer from Volos NPS for Achilleas Poungouras 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.
Thiago Nuss 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.