Marked for Aymerick Bering
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad20 Sep 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 12 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match15 Sep 2027
Huesca out of the cup
Leganés ended it 1‑1. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Player ratings20 Sep 2027
Álex Marchal, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 9.00
A mark of 9.00 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad20 Sep 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Huesca may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Player ratings20 Sep 2027
Successful dribbles: 24. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Hervin Goyes is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Tempers go at Huesca
Álex Padilla 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.
The terraces20 Sep 2027
The crowd has taken to Paolo Limon
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings20 Sep 2027
Raúl Navarro misses from twelve yards
It was his to settle and he did not settle it. A long walk back to the halfway line, and a considerably longer week.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
The statement thanked him for his efforts and wished him well, in that order and in about that many words. The search begins immediately.
Squad2 Aug 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Huesca may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
“I am not thinking past Saturday, and I would advise nobody else to.” The caretaker’s first rule is to pretend the job is small; Miguel Solís recited it perfectly.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Álex Padilla 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 Huesca this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Words at Huesca training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sergi Enrich 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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Juan Cruz is playing like a man with something to prove
The oldest phenomenon in the sport: a new voice in the dressing room and suddenly everybody is available for everything. Juan Cruz is training as though the last team sheet never existed, because as far as he is concerned it does not.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad5 Jul 2027
Kevin Trapp breaks a bone — 46 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 46 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market5 Jul 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 Paris FC, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Otávio signs a new deal
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Otávio commits to Paris FC for another 5 years.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Words at Paris FC training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Otávio 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.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Samir Chergui has improved at 28, 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.
Market5 Jul 2027
Ylan El Hadary comes back from a loan that worked
22 appearances and 3 goals away from here, and a player the manager did not have in August. Loans are sent out hoping for exactly this and most of them do not deliver it.