Marked for Emmanuel Owusu
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings20 Nov 2028
Two goals and a mark of 8.52 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad20 Nov 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Medeama may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Yussif Mubarik 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.
Match18 Nov 2028
A 3‑2 win over New Edubiase United, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings20 Nov 2028
Successful dribbles: 20. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Fatawu Sulemana 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 terraces20 Nov 2028
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.
Player ratings20 Nov 2028
Emmanuel Owusu was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.73. 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.
Squad20 Nov 2028
The manager makes an example of Felix Kyei
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match11 Nov 2028
The wait goes on for Medeama
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.
Squad13 Nov 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Medeama this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Nov 2028
Words at Medeama training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fatawu Sulemana 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.
Match11 Nov 2028
1‑2 to Inter Allies, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad13 Nov 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Derrick Fordjour, and the manager let it.
Player ratings13 Nov 2028
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match4 Oct 2028
The cup run ends for Medeama
0‑0 against Heart of Lions, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Match7 Oct 2028
The wait goes on for Medeama
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.
Match7 Oct 2028
Whatever happens, Medeama do not lose
8 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad9 Oct 2028
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Yussif Mubarik commits to Medeama for another 2 years.
Match7 Oct 2028
Nobody wins at Medeama
10 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Squad9 Oct 2028
Fatawu Sulemana 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.
Squad9 Oct 2028
Victor Oduro 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.
Squad9 Oct 2028
The manager makes an example of Walid Fuseini
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings9 Oct 2028
Twelve yards, a goalkeeper guessing, and it still did not go in. He will take the next one, and every soul in the ground will hold their breath.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad2 Oct 2028
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Yussif Mubarik commits to Medeama for another 2 years.
Squad2 Oct 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Medeama this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match30 Sep 2028
Whatever happens, Medeama do not lose
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Match30 Sep 2028
Medeama make home a hard place to visit
9 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad2 Oct 2028
Words at Medeama training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fatawu Sulemana 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.
Squad2 Oct 2028
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.22, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Market2 Oct 2028
Kingsley Braye is free to find somewhere else
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Medeama has been clear about where Kingsley Braye stands, which is more than many ever get.
Match30 Sep 2028
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market4 Sep 2028
Medeama say no — this time
The offer from Ashanti Gold for Emmanuel Owusu 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.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Yussif Mubarik 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 Sep 2028
The medical room confirms 22 days on the sidelines for Walid Fuseini, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Boardroom4 Sep 2028
Graduation day at Medeama
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Ibrahim Nurudeen has improved at 30, which nobody expected
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.
Squad4 Sep 2028
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Abidemi Alli and Medeama agree another 2 years.
Match2 Sep 2028
Medeama cannot find the net
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Player ratings4 Sep 2028
20 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Market4 Sep 2028
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Kamaldeen Baba is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings13 Mar 2028
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad13 Mar 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Medeama this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match11 Mar 2028
It finished 2‑1, and it was Emmanuel Owusu’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Medeama.
Player ratings13 Mar 2028
Marked 8.58 — 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.
Squad13 Mar 2028
Words at Medeama training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fatawu Sulemana 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.
Squad13 Mar 2028
The manager makes an example of Rafael Assis
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad13 Mar 2028
When it matters, Felix Kyei plays
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Market13 Mar 2028
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Manuel Mantey signs something — a contract at Medeama or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Player ratings13 Mar 2028
He was not in the side at half past three and he had settled it before five. Half an hour, and Medeama had a different afternoon.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad24 Jan 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 23 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings24 Jan 2028
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Mohamed Ali Saleh Ziad did not need any: 8.09, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Market24 Jan 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 Medeama, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad24 Jan 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.
Boardroom24 Jan 2028
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Nathaniel Teye has agreed terms with New Edubiase United for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Market24 Jan 2028
Nathaniel Teye has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Medeama they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad24 Jan 2028
Yussif Mubarik 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 terraces24 Jan 2028
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Mohamed Ali Saleh Ziad has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Match22 Jan 2028
It finished 2‑0, and it was Mohamed Ali Saleh Ziad’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Medeama.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match15 Jan 2028
The wait goes on for Medeama
17 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.
Squad17 Jan 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 30 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad17 Jan 2028
A move Abidemi Alli would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Abidemi Alli is living that version at Medeama, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad17 Jan 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Medeama this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Jan 2028
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings17 Jan 2028
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings17 Jan 2028
A mark of 7.96, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Match15 Jan 2028
It needed Manuel Mantey to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Aduana Stars, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Market17 Jan 2028
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Manuel Mantey signs something — a contract at Medeama or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match30 Dec 2026
Cup progress for Medeama
A 2‑0 win over Aduana Stars, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Market4 Jan 2027
The bid was some way short and Medeama did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Mohamed Ali Saleh Ziad did not need any: 8.25, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad4 Jan 2027
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Medeama have had the benefit of it.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 25. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Boardroom4 Jan 2027
An order from above at Medeama: 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.
Squad4 Jan 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 Medeama this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces4 Jan 2027
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Mohamed Ali Saleh Ziad has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.