19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bourg-Peronnas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
8 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.
Benjamin Bešić 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 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.
Simone Potop is 35 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.87 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Daan Rots 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 clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Twente is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad26 Feb 2035
Stav Lemkin 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.
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.
Daan Rots 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. Simone Potop will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Twente the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad29 Jan 2035
Stav Lemkin 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.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Twente pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
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.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Roda? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 86th, and De Graafschap spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Twente have had the benefit of it.
428 appearances across 14 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.01 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Twente this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Twente is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
5 games now with at least two against. The back line has been rearranged, the goalkeeper has been backed publicly, and the goals keep going in anyway.
Squad1 Jan 2035
Words at Twente training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Owen Wijndal 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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.50 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Twente hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Balance sheets do not care about form or about who the manager was planning to build around. The board have decided a sale is required, and the only question left is which name ends up carrying it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Twente this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Simone Potop has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Twente is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
4‑5 to PSV, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad4 Dec 2034
Words at Twente training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stav Lemkin 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.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings13 Feb 2034
A brace, and Patrik Schick takes the afternoon — 8.90
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Patrik Schick provided it, and the 8.90 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Twente this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad13 Feb 2034
Stav Lemkin 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.
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.
1 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.
5 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Twente this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A conversation is coming this week. Twente will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Squad16 Jan 2034
Stav Lemkin 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.
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.