Nikita Krivtsov 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.
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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 9 actions, 6.96, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
Position 10, 11 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Levadiakos will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Levadiakos, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Levadiakos will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 19 arrived, 3 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Eibar is saying, and nobody at Levadiakos is enjoying the guessing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levadiakos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Levadiakos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yury Lodygin 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.
Levadiakos asked and Racing Ferrol said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Panetolikos next, and one man in the Levadiakos dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.