93 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. AEK lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
AEK had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Ajax, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
The offer went to Hull City this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
$23.8M on the table at Almería. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Zini had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Volos NPS waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AEK is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The fee is $1.7M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. PAOK drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Jonjoe Kenny has just signed for AEK, and for once the answer mattered.
The words a physio says slowly. 30 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.
“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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AEK they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at AEK heard it as anything else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ángel Correa 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.
A 2‑0 win over Aris Thessaloniki, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
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.
Marked 8.28 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings22 Nov 2027
Mijat Gaćinović was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.03. 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.
Player ratings22 Nov 2027
Zini was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.02. 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.
Position 2, 28 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.
Every long career reaches the week the player starts thinking about the last one. He would like it to be at the club that first put him on a pitch, and AEK now know that too.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Eleftherios Limnios and AEK agree another 4 years.
Player ratings15 Nov 2027
Zini was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.67. 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.
With 8 players away on international duty the sessions are small and the manager can actually hear himself. It is the one break in the season, and it never quite feels like one.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. AEL Larisa spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
0‑1 away to the standard of Anderlecht. Nobody will pretend this was a scandal; the gap is real, it is measurable, and closing it is a project rather than a team talk.
Lovro Majer 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 had been thinking. Barnabás Varga 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.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Charalampos Lykogiannis will call it something else in private.
Derby days make names, and Barnabás Varga made his against Panathinaikos. 1‑0, bragging rights secured, and one half of town will be tired of hearing about him by Tuesday.
There are goals, and then there are goals against that particular opponent. The AEK support have their bragging rights for a year and they know exactly whose name is on them.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at AEK hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Ângelo wants continental football; whether AEK can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Lovro Majer 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.
7 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Alanyaspor had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
AEK had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Olympiacos, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
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.
“I watch every AEK game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Bekescsaba runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
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.
Ângelo 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.
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.
“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 AEK, and 6 appearances in 37 say he has earned the hearing.
“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; AEK are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Nobody at AEK will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Lovro Majer signs something — a contract at AEK or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
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 Barnabás Varga has written the date down.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.85 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
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.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
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.
“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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Barnabás Varga 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.
The first defeat in 4 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Aris Thessaloniki; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
“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 AEK, and 5 appearances in 15 say he has earned the hearing.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.22 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
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 training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 9 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Aboubakary Koita. 2‑0 against AEL Larisa, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
8.24. 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.
5 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Lovro Majer 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 training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 8 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
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.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
Two goals and a mark of 8.64 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at AEK hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Javi Mier is living that version at AEK, and it tends to show in the first month.
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 AEK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Efthymios Donis is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Panagiotis Mavropanos has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.