Marked for Bark Abdramane
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market5 Oct 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
The terraces5 Oct 2026
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 9 of the 21 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Bark Abdramane is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Tempers go at AS PSI
Brahim Goudja 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.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Graduation day at AS PSI
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Squad5 Oct 2026
At 30 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Asadbek Baxshilloyev commits to AS PSI for another 3 years.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
209% of the income goes out in wages at AS PSI
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.
Market5 Oct 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Abdramane Haroun is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Sep 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Brahim Goudja is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Tempers go at AS PSI
Brahim Goudja 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Mahamat Adam Ali has improved at 24, 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Market21 Sep 2026
Nobody sells a season ticket on a signing like this. Every manager who has been through a bad October wants one anyway, and AS PSI have gone and got theirs early.
Market21 Sep 2026
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Joël Djingar’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
In brief
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Market
AS PSI shop where it costs nothing
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Market
AS PSI shop where it costs nothing
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Issa Hassaballah is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad14 Sep 2026
At 30 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Bark Abdramane knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at AS PSI, and both men came out saying it was fine.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at AS PSI, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Bark Abdramane is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Ali Abba 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 PSI this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.