Marked for Willange Pembélé
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match20 Sep 2028
Paris FC ended it 1‑1. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Player ratings25 Sep 2028
Diego Coutadeur could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 7.96
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 7.96, 1 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
Match23 Sep 2028
AJ Auxerre throw away a 2-goal lead
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with RC Lens the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that AJ Auxerre will enjoy reviewing.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Donovan Léon is the hero from the spot
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Donovan Léon: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Squad25 Sep 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” AJ Auxerre may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Player ratings25 Sep 2028
Nobody could get near Eros Maddy
Successful dribbles: 26. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Paco Esteban in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AJ Auxerre this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Words at AJ Auxerre training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sinaly Diomandé 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.
Player ratings25 Sep 2028
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.76, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match26 Aug 2028
The wait goes on for AJ Auxerre
11 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.
Match26 Aug 2028
AJ Auxerre throw away a 2-goal lead
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with FC Lorient the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that AJ Auxerre will enjoy reviewing.
Player ratings28 Aug 2028
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.86, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Noël Atom 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.
Squad28 Aug 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 AJ Auxerre this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Aug 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Kévin Danois, and the manager let it.
The terraces28 Aug 2028
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.
Squad28 Aug 2028
At 34 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.
Player ratings28 Aug 2028
9 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
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 AJ Auxerre can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom31 Jul 2028
The silence upstairs is getting loud at AJ Auxerre
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Arthur Zagré gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Arthur Zagré has just signed for AJ Auxerre, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Pedro Bigas in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AJ Auxerre this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Jamal Gonzaga 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
At 24 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Jul 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Zakaria Ztouti is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Market3 Jul 2028
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Johan Campaña wants continental football; whether AS Nancy can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Khalis Merah in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AS Nancy this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Jul 2028
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Yannis Nahounou and AS Nancy agree another 4 years.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Álex Méndez 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.
Boardroom3 Jul 2028
AS Nancy sign 7 boys into the academy
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.