Stephane Keller

Central Defender - MC Alger
2 Feb 2031
Sunday
Process

Marked for Stephane Keller

171 Edition

The MC Alger Courier

5 Nov 2029
From our football correspondent Triumph

Match

The run at home goes on for MC Alger

38 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.

Match

Still nobody has beaten MC Alger

The unbeaten run reaches 18. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.

Player ratings

Both of them Parfait Guiagon's — 9.31

2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.31, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.

The dugout

Stephane Keller says MC Alger went back on their word

“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.

Squad

Parfait Guiagon is carrying MC Alger

18 goals and a season average of 7.55. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.

Market

Alhassane Bangoura has one foot out of the door

Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around MC Alger they have already started talking about him in the past tense.

Squad

Tempers go at MC Alger

Parfait Guiagon 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.

Squad

A row about effort at MC Alger

Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jean was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.

Squad

Stephane Keller stays put

“The easiest signature of my career.” Stephane Keller and MC Alger agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.

In brief

Back issues
154 Edition

The MC Alger Courier

9 Jul 2029
From our football correspondent Upbeat

Squad

The knee: Merwane Khelif out for 31 days

31 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. MC Alger lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.

Match

The view from the top for MC Alger

79 points, and the rest of the division looking up. Every side that finishes first spends the season pretending it is not thinking about it, and this one has started pretending.

Market

MC Alger may not be able to give Parfait Guiagon what he wants

It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Parfait Guiagon wants continental football; whether MC Alger can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.

Market

Only the photograph left for Alhassane Bangoura

Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Alhassane Bangoura will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around MC Alger the goodbyes have quietly begun.

Market

MC Alger say no — this time

The offer from USM Khenchela for Abderrahmane Halliche 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.

Squad

Words exchanged at MC Alger

Parfait Guiagon 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.

Squad

A move Stephane Keller would have made for nothing

There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Stephane Keller is living that version at MC Alger, and it tends to show in the first month.

Squad

Jean falls out with a teammate over standards

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.

Market

CR Belouizdad expected to open talks for Mohamed Awad

Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. MC Alger will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.

In brief