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.
At 37, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
Iago Santos 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.
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.
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.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Ibrahim Ozil was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Esenler Erokspor dressing room was either.
13 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Pendikspor defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Sakaryaspor in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Álvaro 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Gabriel Bahia 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Squad5 Oct 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Birkan Tetik
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Birkan Tetik has come out of that comparison in the side, and Esenler Erokspor have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
“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.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Adana Demirspor? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 9 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gabriel Bahia 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.
Successful dribbles: 17. 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.
7 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Iago Santos has, at Esenler Erokspor, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Successful dribbles: 23. 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gabriel Bahia 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Iago Santos and Esenler Erokspor agree another 3 years.