The words a physio says slowly. 30 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.
18 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Oussama Benbout: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at USM Alger this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
53 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al Ahly lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
18 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al Ahly is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Mohamed Seha has improved at 25, 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 90 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al Ahly they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Marked 8.05 — 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.
139 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al Ahly lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The offer from Plateau United for Belal Ateya 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.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
16 goals and a season average of 7.23 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Words at Al Ahly training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zizo 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.
“I watch every Al Ahly game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at USM Alger runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al Ahly is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Words at Al Ahly training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zizo 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Al Ahly is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 20 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
“I watch every Al Ahly game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at USM Alger runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al Ahly they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Zidan Nageh is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Al Ahly training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zizo 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.
“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 Ahly, and 3 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” USM Alger have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ala Eddine Limane is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Ali Ghazal 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 17 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
The 89th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Oto John decided nobody was going anywhere. MC El Bayadh had no time left to answer.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 86th, and MB Rouissat spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Two goals and a mark of 8.12 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Emad Hassan, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.14
A mark of 8.14 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
1 for Achref Abada, marked 7.99, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Ali Ghazal 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mohamed Zaalouk is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Mohamed Sherif provided it, and the 8.52 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“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 Ahly heard it as anything else.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Hamza Alaa will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Al Ahly the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 6 matches without defeat is a foundation Al Ahly did not have in the autumn.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Al Ahly training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zizo 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at USM Alger this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at USM Alger training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ali Ghazal 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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. USM Alger will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
6 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Ali Ghazal is 34 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
295 appearances across 11 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
“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 Ahly heard it as anything else.
The phone has started ringing about Mohamed Zaalouk again, and this time the name on the line is USM Alger. Al Ahly are listening politely and promising nothing.
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 Ahly this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadWords at Al Ahly training over how hard people work