Add another name to the list: Al-Hilal have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Jason. The answer from Al-Fayha has not changed — yet.
Al-Hilal paid $1.7M and Al-Fayha took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all 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 Al-Fayha this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Two goals and a mark of 9.07 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The offer from Al-Shabab for Silvère Ganvoula 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.
He is going to CR Belouizdad, the club has $4.7M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Chris Smalling 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 name of Yassine Benzia has come up in conversations Al-Fayha were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Everyone has stopped pretending: CR Belouizdad will make the call about Fashion Sakala this week. Al-Fayha have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
Fashion Sakala has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
What was a back-page story is now a matter for the terraces, and the terraces do not do nuance. Al-Fayha would like it dealt with before it becomes the only question anybody asks.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Al-Fayha, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer from Al-Saudi Al-Watani for Ali Al-Hussain 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.
Chris Smalling 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.
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.