There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Al-Ittihad will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Roger Fernandes did not need any: 7.85, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
The offer from Al-Hilal for Hassan Kadish was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Al-Ittihad have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Danilo Pereira 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.
Match2 Jan 2027
Another one collected away from home
4 on the bounce on the road for Al-Ittihad. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Getting past Predrag Rajković has become the hardest job in the division
14 clean sheets and counting. Forwards used to back themselves here; now they shoot early, shoot wide, and look for somebody to blame.
“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-Ittihad, and 0 appearances in 21 say he has earned the hearing.
Position 2, 27 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
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-Ittihad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
“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-Ittihad, and 0 appearances in 12 say he has earned the hearing.
Three points for Al-Ittihad, 1‑0 the final word against Al-Faisaly in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at Al-Ittihad training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luis Solignac 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.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Lucas Bruera: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Emirates Club go through and Al Nasr go home, 0‑0 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
24 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.
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 Nasr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Saeed Maqdami is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
At 22 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.
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 Nasr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Marius Marin 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.
The offer from Shakhtar for Youssef En-Nesyri was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Al-Ittihad heard it as anything else.
Moussa Diaby 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 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.