Barcelona are seething over the way Frenkie de Jong's situation has unfolded. The Dutch midfielder is still battling physical problems with no recovery in sight. The indicators are grim, yet he continues to reject surgery, and the Catalan club's board do not agree with that call.
Sources inside Barcelona confirm, according to the Spanish newspaper "Sport", that conservative treatment no longer delivers the desired results. More than six weeks have passed since de Jong ended his World Cup on 30 June, and the player still hasn't taken the step of going under the knife despite his condition failing to improve as hoped.
The frustration runs deeper than that. Barcelona's management believe the handling of de Jong's condition since late last winter was shaped by his burning desire to be ready for the World Cup.
De Jong played his last full match for Barcelona on 22 February. His absence then stretched across nine consecutive games, before he featured in six more without reclaiming a starting spot. He ended the season rested for La Liga's final two matches before linking up with the Netherlands.
According to the club's board, that sequence amounted to extremely cautious management of his fitness with one aim: direct preparation for the World Cup.
Everything changed the moment the tournament arrived. De Jong started every one of the Netherlands' World Cup matches and held his place until they were knocked out on 30 June.
He later claimed the Netherlands' medical staff had misjudged the injury. Defending himself, he insisted he kept playing because he knew he could do so without aggravating the problem.
Doubts hang over the whole affair inside Barcelona, from every angle.
After the World Cup, both sides agreed on roughly four weeks of conservative treatment before assessing whether surgery was needed. That's where one of the biggest disputes has flared.
De Jong believes the four-week count should start from the moment he returned to training, arguing that the recovery work only truly began then, testing how his knee responded.
Barcelona see it completely differently. The board maintain the player was doing the same rehabilitation work before he returned to training, so they don't understand why the clock should reset to zero. As far as the medical and sporting staff are concerned, the window granted for conservative treatment has already run far longer than usual.
The core problem is simple. The expected improvement hasn't materialised on the pitch.
Scans of the knee show no sign of relief. Barcelona believe the conservative route is now very close to being completely exhausted.
The board have taken a firm line: de Jong must have surgery to end the crisis and begin a rehabilitation programme with clear dates and a defined timeline.
The midfielder, for his part, remains reluctant to go under the knife and insists on more time for conservative treatment.
That gap is fundamental. For de Jong, the decisive four-week period hasn't ended yet. For Barcelona's board, it began right after the World Cup, and any further waiting is simply delaying a decision that grows more inevitable by the day.
Then there's the sporting and administrative fallout. Should surgery rule him out long term, Barcelona will explore the regulatory mechanisms available to open a margin for registering players and use part of it to sign someone new, on top of claiming financial compensation from FIFA for an injury suffered on international duty.
Hansi Flick needs to know when he can genuinely count on one of his key midfielders again, even if Rodri's presence lessens the role.
Barcelona want to end a problem that has dragged on for months and hobbled de Jong. The player, meanwhile, still wants to wait.
After everything that happened before and during the World Cup, that clash of views has left a mood of clear dissatisfaction inside Barcelona.