“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.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
A brace, and Gafar Saka takes the afternoon — 9.15
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Gafar Saka provided it, and the 9.15 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: SuperSport United keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Victor Dawa 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Plateau United, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 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.
Victor Dawa 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.
Boardroom4 Jan 2027
5 academy players handed senior numbers at Plateau United
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
The phone has started ringing about Domnan Panse again, and this time the name on the line is Wikki Tourists. Plateau United are listening politely and promising nothing.
Plateau United asked and AE Kition said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Victor Dawa has his answer from Plateau United; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Plateau United have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Successful dribbles: 18. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Musa Olagunju chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Joshua Dabo 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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Wikki Tourists waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Plateau United is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at SuperSport United is saying, and nobody at Plateau United is enjoying the guessing.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Dakup Tongshinen has agreed terms with El-Kanemi Warriors for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Plateau United they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Okiemute Odah 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Gimba Ajiji. 1‑0 against Niger Tornadoes, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
In brief
SquadWords at Plateau United training over how hard people work