Éric Traoré 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 Alexander Jakobsen was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
10 combined actions and 6.94. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Minute 90, against Al Gaish, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
9 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ismaily this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 87. Police Union had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Ismaily know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Éric Traoré 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.
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑4 defeat, delivered by Trezeguet Ashour to a room that had heard them before.
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ismaily this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Alexander Jakobsen was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Yassin Marei’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Ismaily needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Ismaily know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Ismaily. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ismaily can pretend not to have heard.
The offer from Enyimba for Stephen Odey 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.
Ismaily had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Orlando Pirates, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Éric Traoré 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.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Tractor have kept their man, and Ismaily go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Éric Traoré was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Ismaily are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.