It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Olympiacos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gustavo Puerta was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Olympiacos know it.
Something was said to Stefan Ortega and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
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.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Akor Adams has written the date down.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Armando González trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The offer from Hammarby for Lorenzo Scipioni was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Lazaros Rota had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Boardroom8 Mar 2027
An order from above at Olympiacos: somebody has to go
Balance sheets do not care about form or about who the manager was planning to build around. The board have decided a sale is required, and the only question left is which name ends up carrying it.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Kostas Fortounis and Olympiacos agree another 2 years.
Ayoub El Kaabi 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Olympiacos are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“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 Olympiacos, and 1 appearances in 26 say he has earned the hearing.
In brief
The dugoutLeon Bailey has become a man the manager trusts
“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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Olympiacos have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.89 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 4 arrived, 2 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Olympiacos offered $1.8M; AEK said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Olympiacos asked and Asteras said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Thomas Strakosha has, at Olympiacos, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Olympiacos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
Loan watchThe goals keep arriving from Yusuf Yazıcı’s exile
SquadRemo Freuler falls out with a teammate over standards
135 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Olympiacos lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Luzern waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Olympiacos is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. PAOK kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Olympiacos will be asked about the last half hour all week.
Two goals and a mark of 8.78 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Kryvbas had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Olympiacos can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 10 signed and 7 gone
That is the business done at Olympiacos until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Olympiacos offered $1.6M; OFI said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
In brief
SquadCarlos Robles arrives at the club he grew up with