“The easiest signature of my career.” Fraser Forster and Clermont Foot agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Fraser Forster and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at Clermont Foot training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yoann Salmier is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
He will be fined, he will apologise, and he will play on Saturday. The order of those three tells you everything about what a football club actually values.
A point taken on 87 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Maxence Soulet is 17, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Ivan M'Bahia commits to Clermont Foot for another 5 years.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Clermont Foot training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yoann Salmier is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Grenoble Foot 38 in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Clermont Foot, another week without a signature from Facundo Paredes.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Clermont Foot. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Dijon go through and Clermont Foot go home, 2‑3 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Loïc Kouamé could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 8.01
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 8.01, 0 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Ousmane Diop, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.64
A mark of 7.64 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Johan Gastien 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.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
A touch he did not mean and a goal that goes in the book with his name against it. Clermont Foot will not blame him tonight and he will not need them to.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Aurélien Pelon was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.