Marked for Fodé Pascoal
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market31 Jul 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Aswan can pretend not to have heard.
Market31 Jul 2028
Add another name to the list: Ghazl El Mahalla have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Cyril Boukhit. The answer from Aswan has not changed — yet.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Fodé Pascoal is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 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.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Tempers go at Aswan
Abdelrahman Magdy 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.
Market31 Jul 2028
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Aswan will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Squad31 Jul 2028
At 29 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
In brief
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Squad
Railan falls out with a teammate over standards
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Market
The shop window has Aqtay Abdallah in it
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market12 Jun 2028
Noah Franke 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 Aswan can pretend not to have heard.
Market12 Jun 2028
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market12 Jun 2028
Only the photograph left for Karim Tarek
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Karim Tarek will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Aswan the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Tempers go at Aswan
Ilias Takidine 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.
Squad12 Jun 2028
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Fodé Pascoal and Aswan agree another 4 years.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Words at Aswan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Railan 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market14 Feb 2028
“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.
Squad14 Feb 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 Aswan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Mostafa Disha 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.
Match12 Feb 2028
A 2‑0 win over Al Gaish, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
Marked 8.75 — 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.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
Ninety minutes of Ilias Takidine at his very best
Marked 8.50. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Aswan.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
19 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.
Squad14 Feb 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.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Noah Franke left out for the big one
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Noah Franke will call it something else in private.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match8 Jan 2028
The wait goes on for Al Gaish
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.
Squad10 Jan 2028
53 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad10 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 Al Gaish this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Words at Al Gaish training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Camacho 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.
Match8 Jan 2028
0‑2 to Al Ahly, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad10 Jan 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Yehia Mostafa, and the manager let it.
Player ratings10 Jan 2028
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market10 Jan 2028
Tahah brings the grey hairs Al Gaish lacked
At 36, he has seen every situation this season can produce, twice. The legs will be managed; the head is the purchase.
Player ratings10 Jan 2028
5.67 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces3 Jan 2028
Anger at Aswan spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Market3 Jan 2028
“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.
Market3 Jan 2028
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Boardroom3 Jan 2028
The silence upstairs is getting loud at Aswan
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Squad3 Jan 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Aswan may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Player ratings3 Jan 2028
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad3 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 Aswan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market3 Jan 2028
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Aswan have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad3 Jan 2028
Words at Aswan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ilias Takidine 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Fodé Pascoal is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Words at Aswan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Noah Franke 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.
Match28 Aug 2027
A 2‑1 win over Ghazl El Mahalla, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Tempers go at Aswan
Mostafa Anani 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 terraces30 Aug 2027
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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Mostafa Abdelrasoul has improved at 29, 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.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Trezeguet Sobhi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.33. 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.
Market30 Aug 2027
Masr El Makasa are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Aswan will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 8. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Jun 2027
“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.
Squad14 Jun 2027
Fodé Pascoal 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.
Squad14 Jun 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 Aswan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
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Squad
Railan falls out with a teammate over standards
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Market
Still no signature from Ali Ezzat
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Jan 2027
A fracture rules Cyril Boukhit out for 122 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Aswan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
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 Aswan have had the benefit of it.
Market4 Jan 2027
“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 Aswan, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Julius Ikechukwu: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Aswan have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Match2 Jan 2027
The wait goes on for Aswan
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.
The terraces4 Jan 2027
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 ratings4 Jan 2027
Marked 8.56 — 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.
Match2 Jan 2027
A 2‑2 draw with Ittihad leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.