Marked for Abdelkader Tamimi
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 25. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad16 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ES Ben Aknoun this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Marked 7.82 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, ES Ben Aknoun had the best player on the pitch.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Abdelkader Tamimi 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match3 Oct 2026
5 matches without a win for ES Ben Aknoun
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around ES Ben Aknoun are no longer polite ones.
Squad5 Oct 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ES Ben Aknoun this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market5 Oct 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at ES Ben Aknoun, another week without a signature from Nassim Yattou.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
95% of the income goes out in wages at ES Ben Aknoun
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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Abdelkader Tamimi 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.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 7.16 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, ES Ben Aknoun had the best player on the pitch.
Squad5 Oct 2026
The captaincy has been taken off Nassim Yattou. ES Ben Aknoun will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Aug 2026
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 28 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market24 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what ES Ben Aknoun can pretend not to have heard.
Squad24 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ES Ben Aknoun this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Abdelkader Tamimi 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at ES Ben Aknoun has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.