The words a physio says slowly. 73 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 29 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guillaume Furrer 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.
Luca Marrone 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.
Luca Marrone damages knee ligaments — 119 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 119 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guillaume Furrer 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.
127 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Lecco lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Gabriel Pellegrino provided it, and the 8.24 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Lecco and Giana Erminio, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Gabriel Pellegrino. 4‑2 against Giana Erminio, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lecco this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
8.09. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
150 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Lecco 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 Lecco this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Lecco will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
Luca Marrone damages knee ligaments — 157 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 157 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lecco this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.