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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
Gustavo Mueller 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Successful dribbles: 14. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Al Nasr training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Costin Amzăr 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 dugoutThe plan did not have a place for Chris Bedia
The dugoutZayed Sultan is not enjoying his job description
Mehdi Ghayedi had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Al Wahda were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Two goals and a mark of 8.54 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Kevin Agudelo wants continental football; whether Al Nasr can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
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.
“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 Al Nasr know it.
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.
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.
8 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Al Nasr can pretend not to have heard.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 14 arrived, 5 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad7 Sep 2026
8 new faces, and Al Nasr are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and João Moreira has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Al Nasr, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The plan went upstairs and came back down. Nothing about that will make a headline anywhere else, and everybody who works at the training ground will remember it for years.
Al Jazira next, and one man in the Al Nasr dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $133.5K — a club that wants Ahmed Fawzi enough to be asked twice.
$610.0K was the most the club would pay and Dibba were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
$120.0K on the table at Baniyas. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Al Wasl have kept their man, and Al Nasr go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Al Nasr training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Costin Amzăr 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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Al Nasr would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.