Marked for Mohammed Slimani
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad6 Mar 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alexandr Ageev
18 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ohod lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom6 Mar 2028
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Boardroom6 Mar 2028
The Ohod board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Market6 Mar 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Ohod, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad6 Mar 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.
Match4 Mar 2028
The wait goes on for Ohod
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.
Squad6 Mar 2028
“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; Ohod are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad6 Mar 2028
Tempers go at Ohod
Cristian Toledo 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.
Match4 Mar 2028
Ohod leaking at the back
4 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad27 Sep 2027
A fracture rules Jorge Zárate out for 36 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Ohod will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match25 Sep 2027
8 matches without a win for Ohod
The run now stands at 8, and the questions being asked around Ohod are no longer polite ones.
Market27 Sep 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.
Squad27 Sep 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Ohod may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Bassam Hazazi is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Tempers go at Ohod
Sergio Murillo 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.
Match25 Sep 2027
The goals have deserted Ohod
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Ohod can tell you which week it ends in.
Match25 Sep 2027
A bad afternoon for Ohod against Al-Mojzel
0‑1 to Al-Mojzel, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings27 Sep 2027
Marked 5.28. 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
Upbeat
Market31 May 2027
Ulises Agüero hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ohod can pretend not to have heard.
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 Ohod this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 May 2027
Mohammed Al-Otaibi 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.