59 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. APOEL lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at APOEL this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Konstantinos Laifis 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. APOEL know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Still no offer on the table, and Nanu’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at APOEL is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Marquinhos 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 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.
The name of Nikolas Koutsakos has come up in conversations APOEL were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“I watch every APOEL game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Pafos runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at APOEL has been clear about where Stefan Dražić stands, which is more than many ever get.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Pieros Sotiriou is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.44 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around APOEL they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at APOEL this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Marquinhos had APOEL level again within 3 minutes, and Apollon never got to play with a lead at all.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nanu 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 am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at APOEL, and 0 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at APOEL this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at APOEL this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Nikos Makris has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Antonis Kyriakou has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Pieros Charalambous is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.