Add another name to the list: Kayserispor have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Soner Dikmen. The answer from Antalyaspor has not changed — yet.
Marked 9.01 — 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.
The name of Mouhamed Gueye has come up in conversations Antalyaspor were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Lautaro Giannetti 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.
Marked 8.29 — 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.
The chase for Gökhan Sazdağı ended with $1.1M changing hands and Besiktas out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Antalyaspor this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.60 — 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.
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
Okay Celik is 16, and Antalyaspor have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
He is 16, and nobody at Antalyaspor signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Still no offer on the table, and Nikola Storm’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Diego Oliveira arrives at 37 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
Lautaro Giannetti 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Antalyaspor, another week without a signature from Sander van de Streek.
24 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kenneth Paal trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Kenneth Paal 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.