The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Sliema Wanderers people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Luke Montebello was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Henry Bonello’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Sliema Wanderers needing him to play as if none of it matters.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Sliema Wanderers would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Sliema Wanderers asked and Barrow AFC said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
He is doing his job and he is not settling. Sliema Wanderers were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luke Montebello 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 manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Steve Pisani has his answer from Sliema Wanderers; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The offer from Hamrun Spartans for Fernandinho 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.
Nikos Karelis 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Jayme was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Signings arrive with a picture of the club in their head, and this one’s picture was bigger than the building. He will play well and he will be gone, in that order, and everybody knows it.
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. Sliema Wanderers will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Teddy Teuma and Sliema Wanderers agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Valur have kept their man, and Sliema Wanderers go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The name of Sylvester Siaw has come up in conversations Sliema Wanderers were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
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.