Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Olympiacos have kept their man, and OFI go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Augusto Lucero has improved at 26, 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.
“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.
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $3.1M has been paid because Zeki Amdouni is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AEK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The name of Zois Karargyris has come up in conversations AEK were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Charalampos Lykogiannis 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.
He is doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and AEK know which stage they are at.
In brief
The dugoutÍñigo Martínez has become a man the manager trusts
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what OFI can pretend not to have heard.
The chase for Jan Repas ended with $560.0K changing hands and AEK out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
The chase for Michalis Panagidis ended with $430.0K changing hands and Aris Thessaloniki out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Thiago Nuss 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lorenzo Dickmann was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at OFI can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
In brief
The dugoutThiago Nuss has become a man the manager trusts
The dugoutMario Gaspar knocks on the manager’s door
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AEK can pretend not to have heard.
Íñigo Martínez 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.
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nahuel Tenaglia 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 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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether AEK can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Enzo Ibrahim Rivière has, at AEK, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nahuel Tenaglia was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
Gaëtan Laborde 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.
17 goals in 18 games at AEL Larisa — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at AEK updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nahuel Tenaglia was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Zenit keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Godoy Cruz waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AEK is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
AEK have gone to PAOK with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” AEK have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Nahuel Tenaglia wants continental football; whether AEK can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.