81 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. MEAP Nisou lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” MEAP Nisou have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Spartakos Kitiou left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Boardroom2 Nov 2026
244% of the income goes out in wages at MEAP Nisou
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Luka Ivanov 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at MEAP Nisou, another week without a signature from Nicolas Souza.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The words a physio says slowly. 88 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at MEAP Nisou this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 19 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 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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Ioannis Alexandrou after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at MEAP Nisou training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Eric Appiah Ansu 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.
In brief
The dugoutDiogo Moreira asks for a word with the manager
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Luka Ivanov 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.
Level with 88 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon MEAP Nisou had all but put away. Chalkanoras Idaliou will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Ioannis Alexandrou was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the MEAP Nisou dressing room was either.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Eric Appiah Ansu was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at MEAP Nisou is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Ethnikos Achnas can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Emmanuel Lomotey and Ethnikos Achnas agree another 4 years.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Ethnikos Achnas know it.
Squad3 Aug 2026
A last season at home is what Richard Ofori is after
It is sentimental, it is completely genuine, and it is the beginning of a departure nobody has announced. The club can be gracious about it or it can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ethnikos Achnas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The phone has started ringing about Nikolas Perdios again, and this time the name on the line is MEAP Nisou. Ethnikos Achnas are listening politely and promising nothing.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. AEL have kept their man, and MEAP Nisou go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mário Gassamá was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Curtis Junior Makosso Moungadji 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.
MEAP Nisou have made the call to Omonoia. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
A loan enquiry to Ethnikos Achnas: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.