Drummond Borges Tells Lyon He Wants A New Deal

The ball has just gone out for a throw on the far side, and Edmar Drummond Borges is on his feet again, pulling the bib tight across his shoulders, waiting for the glance that does not come. Around him the Lyon bench leans forward with the play; he leans forward with something else. Four times now this season he has come on. Not once has he begun a match. The clock has become his opponent, and it is winning.

On 7 October the waiting hardened into a position. Drummond Borges has spoken to his team-mates: he wants a new deal, one that reflects his ability. That is the phrase, and it deserves to be taken seriously. A man does not ask to be paid for his legs at thirty-two; he asks to be paid for what he knows, for the reading of a game that no sprint can teach. There is a dignity in the demand, and a calculation too. Tony Roberts, in charge since early August, has so far found him a role measured in minutes.

The dressing room has heard him, and has not turned away. There is a tenderness in this Lyon squad for the man who has been here since January 2050, whose five hundred and sixty games in the shirt carry the weight of a long marriage. Earlier this autumn these same team-mates decided that Juan Antonio had been treated unfairly; they are a group quick to feel for one of their own. Lyon sit top after nine games of the Ligue 1 Uber Eats season, a position that makes every private grievance a small public question. The club knows how to win, and lately knows how to lose too, runners-up in the Trophée des Champions as that run of three ended.

He is not unhappy in the ordinary sense. He is unhappy in the way of the proud. A new contract would be a sentence written about him rather than around him, and he has told his colleagues so. Whether the club writes it is another matter, and not one he has chosen to settle in silence.