Is Boumsong's time at RB Leipzig up?
Edouard Boumsong has started none of RB Leipzig's last two games and sat on the bench for both, with no injury to explain it.
Eight starts in eleven games, then nothing. Edouard Boumsong was a fixture in RB Leipzig's back line. Now he watches from the bench, and nobody is saying he is hurt.
Two games have passed in this cycle. Boumsong started neither. He was on the bench for both, and out of the squad for none. No injury is recorded. That is the whole of it, and it is enough to raise the question every squad man dreads.
In his place: Marco Aurélio Gonçalves Filho. Twenty-three, Brazilian, and holding the shirt. His average rating this season stands at 6.98. The team has won one and lost one in those two games, the second by 2-1. Not a collapse. Not a crisis. Just a different name on the team sheet where Boumsong's used to be.
Eric Beutel has been in charge since 15 June. He owes nobody a place. A coach picks what he trusts, and right now he trusts the younger man.
Boumsong is thirty. He has played 458 club games and won 85 caps for Belgium. That buys respect. It does not buy a starting spot.
This is how it goes in this business. One week you are the first name written down. The next you are the bloke in the bib watching someone else warm up. No announcement. No explanation. Just the team sheet, every week, telling you the truth.
The Ruhr knows the feeling. Men who grafted for years, then one morning the foreman walks past them to a lad half their age. You can shout about it or you can get your head down and make the next training session count. There is only one answer that ever works.
Gonçalves Filho has the shirt. Boumsong has the bench. For now.