The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Aris is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alex Opoku Sarfo 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.
Tamás Csilus 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.
In brief
SquadA muscle injury sidelines Yannick Gomis for 15 days
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Aris 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 Aris 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.
Squad27 Mar 2028
13 new faces, and Aris are still learning each other
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.
Rody Junior Effaghe had done his part in building a 3-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Ermis were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Position 3, 34 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
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 Aris have had the benefit of it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Aris can pretend not to have heard.
Gédéon Kalulu 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. Alex Opoku Sarfo 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 paperwork is done long before the player is. Vladimir Tufegdžić has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Aris have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Rody Junior Effaghe provided it, and the 10.00 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gédéon Kalulu 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 Aris this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 23 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.
In brief
SquadA muscle injury sidelines Yannick Gomis for 15 days
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Alex Opoku Sarfo is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
Kostas Pileas 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.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Gédéon Kalulu has improved at 30, 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Aris has been clear about where Yannick Gomis stands, which is more than many ever get.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Aris they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Gédéon Kalulu 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alex Opoku Sarfo 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 paperwork is done long before the player is. Trae Briscoe has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Aris have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
The words a physio says slowly. 26 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Aris have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad29 Mar 2027
José Silva 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.
152 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Aris 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 Aris can pretend not to have heard.
Gédéon Kalulu 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. José Silva 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.
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.