Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Orobah they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Squad27 Aug 2029
Words at Al-Orobah training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Simy 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Al-Orobah can pretend not to have heard.
“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.
Player ratings20 Aug 2029
Up for the corner, and Jehad Thikri delivers — 7.95
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Jehad Thikri scored, was marked 7.95, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al-Orobah is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
6 goals in one match, Azzam Al-Bishi on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Al-Orobah and Damac.
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.
8.72. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al-Orobah will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 The request is on a desk at Al-Orobah, and it is not being withdrawn.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 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.
Squad16 Jul 2029
Words at Al-Orobah training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Simy 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.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Hamad Al-Sheikh has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Al-Orobah have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al-Orobah will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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-Orobah, and it is not being withdrawn.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Orobah they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“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; Al-Orobah are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al-Orobah will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al-Orobah is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Boardroom4 Jun 2029
An order from above at Al-Orobah: somebody has to go
Balance sheets do not care about form or about who the manager was planning to build around. The board have decided a sale is required, and the only question left is which name ends up carrying it.
Add another name to the list: Al-Ahli have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Ali Al-Sultan. The answer from Al-Orobah has not changed — yet.
Ahmed Al-Juwaid 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.
Squad4 Jun 2029
Words at Al-Orobah training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Simy 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Al-Orobah know it.
3 appearances and 0 goals is not a season, it is a year somebody has lost. Whether that is his fault, the borrowing club's or the people who arranged it is the argument the next few weeks will have.
In brief
The terracesThe stands have heard the Ali Al-Sultan talk too
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Azzam Al-Bishi reports back to Al-Orobah with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
“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-Orobah, and it is not being withdrawn.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.34 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Orobah they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
25 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.
Marked 9.24 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
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.
Al-Jeel will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Abdulrahman Al-Shanqiti has pre-agreed a move to Al-Orobah, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Al-Orobah can pretend not to have heard.
26 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al-Orobah is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Abdulrahman Al-Dhafeeri 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.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.02 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Orobah they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Radim Šudák 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Al-Orobah can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Orobah they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
“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; Al-Orobah are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Radim Šudák 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad23 Oct 2028
The manager has not finished forgetting Simy's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Al-Orobah, and 1 appearances in 19 say he has earned the hearing.
The words a physio says slowly. 47 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 deal that would have taken Azzam Al-Bishi to Al-Riyadh has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Al-Orobah with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.97 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad11 Sep 2028
Words at Al-Orobah training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Simy 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.
Kattê 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.
41 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al-Orobah lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Simy provided it, and the 8.40 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.05 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Azzam Al-Bishi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Al-Orobah the goodbyes have quietly begun.
6 goals in one match, Simy on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Al-Orobah and Al-Shoulla.