At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.88 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Blaise Loïc Tsagué 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Marcel Djialeu was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Abiola Dauda has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
0‑2 against PWD Bamenda, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
A brace, and Abiola Dauda takes the afternoon — 8.91
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Abiola Dauda provided it, and the 8.91 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Gazelle Garoua is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Blaise Loïc Tsagué 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.
A 2‑0 win over Victoria United, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
8.11. 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mahman Nourou is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Gazelle Garoua they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Marcel Djialeu was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Housseini Ousmanou 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.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.79 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
At 18 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gazelle Garoua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 4‑1, Maxime Embolo could afford to be generous.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Gazelle Garoua have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 18 arrived, 0 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gazelle Garoua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Samuel Kameni is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The plan went upstairs and came back down. Nothing about that will make a headline anywhere else, and everybody who works at the training ground will remember it for years.
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Canon Yaounde.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Marcel Djialeu has moved up it.
Blaise Loïc Tsagué 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Landry Toko-Ekambi has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Eric Anguissa has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Achille Bekale has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Georges Mbia is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Colbert Binni was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Gazelle Garoua will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
Gazelle Garoua have made the call to Panthere du Nde. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Colbert Binni was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Gazelle Garoua will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Gazelle Garoua, another week without a signature from Housseini Ousmanou.
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
A loan enquiry to Colombe du Dja et Lobo: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
A loan enquiry to Aigle Royal de la Menoua: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Housseini Ousmanou trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.