Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Nagoya Grampus will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Yuya Yamagishi 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Nagoya Grampus training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ryuji Izumi 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 have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Nagoya Grampus can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Sho Inagaki 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.
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Nagoya Grampus training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ryuji Izumi 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.
Sho Inagaki and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Ryuji Izumi 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.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
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.
6 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.
“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 Nagoya Grampus, and it is not being withdrawn.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Shinji Ueda after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
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 Yuya Asano is on it.
The clubs have shaken hands with Kawasaki Frontale; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
“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.
Successful dribbles: 24. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Nagoya Grampus have paid $630.0K for Everton Galdino, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
The offer went to Yokohama F. Marinos 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.
$200.0K was the most the club would pay and Sanfrecce Hiroshima 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Nagoya Grampus training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ryuji Izumi 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.
Teruki Hara 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.
Nagoya Grampus asked and FC Tokyo said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
123 appearances across 10 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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Nagoya Grampus can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nagoya Grampus this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ryuji Izumi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.