Marked for Jacob Onyango
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market3 Jul 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Tusker can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom3 Jul 2028
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Jolame Domonikibau has agreed terms with Bandari for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Market3 Jul 2028
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Tusker they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad3 Jul 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tusker this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom3 Jul 2028
The numbers do not look good at Tusker
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Words at Tusker training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Paul Ochuoga 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.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Pape Fall gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Pape Fall has outgrown this division
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Tusker know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Boardroom3 Jul 2028
Intake day at the Tusker academy
6 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market19 Jul 2027
Chinanu Victor has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bidco United they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market19 Jul 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad19 Jul 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Bidco United may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad19 Jul 2027
Adama 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.
Squad19 Jul 2027
Chizoba Amaefule 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.
Squad19 Jul 2027
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match26 Jun 2027
Still nobody has beaten Tusker
The unbeaten run reaches 12. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Market28 Jun 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad28 Jun 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tusker this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Chris Erambo 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.
Match26 Jun 2027
Bandari made Tusker work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad28 Jun 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Vincent Owino, and the manager let it.
Player ratings28 Jun 2027
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Fabien Adikiny has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Tusker will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Player ratings28 Jun 2027
A mark of 5.77 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad14 Jun 2027
Clinton Asiago damages knee ligaments — 38 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 38 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market14 Jun 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match12 Jun 2027
7 matches without a win for Bidco United
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Bidco United are no longer polite ones.
Squad14 Jun 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Bidco United may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad14 Jun 2027
Adama Traoré in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bidco United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Jun 2027
Words at Bidco United training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Chizoba Amaefule 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.
Match12 Jun 2027
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Player ratings14 Jun 2027
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings14 Jun 2027
Shots: 8, not one of them in. A centre forward is paid for one thing, and on this evidence he has forgotten which thing it is.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad7 Jun 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Richard Matloga
15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bidco United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match5 Jun 2027
6 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.
Squad7 Jun 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Bidco United may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market7 Jun 2027
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Clinton Asiago reports back to Bidco United with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Boardroom7 Jun 2027
The Bidco United board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Squad7 Jun 2027
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Bidco United are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad7 Jun 2027
Adama 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.
Player ratings7 Jun 2027
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match5 Jun 2027
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Bidco United can tell you which week it ends in.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad31 May 2027
“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.
Match29 May 2027
8 unbeaten for Tusker
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation Tusker did not have in the autumn.
Squad31 May 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tusker this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 May 2027
Chris Erambo 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.
Match29 May 2027
It finished 1‑0, and it was Eric Kapaito’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Tusker.
Player ratings31 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad31 May 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Cliff Oruko, and the manager let it.
Player ratings31 May 2027
The afternoon belonged to Eric Kapaito
7.76, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Tusker had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Player ratings31 May 2027
15 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad24 May 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Richard Matloga
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bidco United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad24 May 2027
“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.
Market24 May 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bidco United can pretend not to have heard.
Match22 May 2027
4 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.
Squad24 May 2027
Adama 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.
Squad24 May 2027
Chizoba Amaefule 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.
Match22 May 2027
APS Bomet left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings24 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings24 May 2027
An afternoon Adama Traoré will want back
Marked 5.43. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad5 Apr 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Richard Matloga
79 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bidco United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market5 Apr 2027
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Bidco United, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings5 Apr 2027
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Gabriel Sloane-Rodrigues did not need any: 7.61, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad5 Apr 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Chizoba Amaefule and Bidco United agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad5 Apr 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bidco United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market5 Apr 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Michael Bodo has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Bidco United.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad8 Mar 2027
Richard Matloga damages knee ligaments — 108 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 108 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market8 Mar 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
The terraces8 Mar 2027
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 7 of the 31 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Boardroom8 Mar 2027
The Bidco United board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Matthew Acton commits to Bidco United for another 2 years.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Oshobe Oladele 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.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 12. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.