Marked for Sid Ahmed Maatellah
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market14 Aug 2028
Only the photograph left for Mpho Mathebula
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mpho Mathebula will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around MC Oran the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Yakoub Guellati is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Ousmane Coumbassa has improved at 27, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad24 Jul 2028
The words a physio says slowly. 22 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.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Yacine Aliane 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 Jul 2028
Words at MC Oran training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ahmed Mohamed Kerroum 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad17 Jul 2028
30 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. MC Oran lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market17 Jul 2028
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at MC Oran is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad17 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 MC Oran this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad26 Jun 2028
51 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. MC Oran lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad26 Jun 2028
“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.
Squad26 Jun 2028
Racine Ba 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 MC Oran this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market19 Jun 2028
The unthinkable, invoiced: Kelyan Guessoum sold
ASO Chlef arrived with $2.2M and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
Squad19 Jun 2028
The words a physio says slowly. 59 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.
The terraces19 Jun 2028
MC Oran sell a favourite for $2.2M
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Kelyan Guessoum was one of the reasons people came, and $2.2M does not replace that by itself.
Market19 Jun 2028
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at MC Oran is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad19 Jun 2028
Helistano Manga gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Helistano Manga has just signed for MC Oran, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad19 Jun 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 MC Oran this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad10 Apr 2028
The words a physio says slowly. 135 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.
Squad10 Apr 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” MC Oran may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad10 Apr 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 MC Oran this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad31 Jan 2028
A fracture rules Houari Baouche out for 26 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason MC Oran will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market31 Jan 2028
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around MC Oran they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Match29 Jan 2028
8 unbeaten for MC Oran
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation MC Oran did not have in the autumn.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Racine Ba 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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
The manager makes an example of Mokhtar Ferrahi
“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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Abderrahim Hamra 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.
Player ratings31 Jan 2028
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match29 Jan 2028
Point won or two lost for MC Oran?
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Paradou? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Market31 Jan 2028
Juba Aguieb linked with a move away
The name of Juba Aguieb keeps appearing in other people's back pages. MC Oran say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad8 Feb 2027
Adel Bouchiba breaks a bone — 72 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 72 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
A brace, and Alimi Sikiru takes the afternoon — 8.22
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Alimi Sikiru provided it, and the 8.22 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Market8 Feb 2027
The bid was some way short and JS Saoura did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market8 Feb 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.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Eyad Tamer: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” JS Saoura have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match6 Feb 2027
Alimi Sikiru scored, and precious little else went right: 2‑3 to USM Alger, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Ahmed El Sheikh 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.
Squad8 Feb 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 JS Saoura this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match30 Dec 2026
A 1‑0 win over ASO Chlef, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Squad4 Jan 2027
Adel Bouchiba breaks a bone — 109 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 109 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market4 Jan 2027
ES Setif come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and JS Saoura did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.32, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad4 Jan 2027
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” JS Saoura have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Alimi Sikiru 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 ratings4 Jan 2027
22 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Bakr El Helali 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.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.47, and no argument anywhere in the ground.