128 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Al-Qadisiyah lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Abdulrahman Al-Khaibari will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Al-Qadisiyah the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Musab Al-Juwayr 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.
Koen Casteels 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
The ambition story running the other way, and the one nobody tells: a footballer asking for a smaller stage, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is very rarely reported as anything else.
Nobody at Al-Qadisiyah 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mohammed Marran trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Musab Al-Juwayr signs something — a contract at Al-Qadisiyah or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“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 The request is on a desk at Al-Qadisiyah, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al-Qadisiyah this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Feb 2031
Words at Al-Qadisiyah training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nacho 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.
Nobody at Al-Qadisiyah 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Al-Qadisiyah, another week without a signature from Turki Al-Ammar.
Position 6 on 40 points, and the places that carry a European ticket are close enough to count. Seasons like this are decided by two results in April, and the club knows which two.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Al-Qadisiyah. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The words a physio says slowly. 56 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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Al-Fateh will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Zaydou Youssouf was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
The mood at Al-Fateh has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Wilfried Kanga 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.
Squad25 Feb 2030
Words at Al-Fateh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zaydou Youssouf 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
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.