Up for the corner, and Ammar El Orfi delivers — 7.58
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Ammar El Orfi scored, was marked 7.58, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 4 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Marco Decherf 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Mohamed Naâmani and MC El Bayadh agree another 1 years.
The dugout8 Feb 2027
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Karim Haddad left the room before anybody could ask which.
16 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. MC El Bayadh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 The request is on a desk at MC El Bayadh, and it is not being withdrawn.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.94 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The deal with USM Alger is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Benjamin Santelli 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.
At 39, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Rayane Abdelmadjid Mahrouz has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Benjamin Santelli. 1‑0 against CS Constantine, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. MC El Bayadh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at MC El Bayadh can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Marco Decherf 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.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The words a physio says slowly. 52 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Chemseddine Nessakh and MC El Bayadh agree another 1 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 MC El Bayadh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 1‑1 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at MC El Bayadh, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The words a physio says slowly. 73 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at MC El Bayadh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
9 new faces, and MC El Bayadh 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.
Nabil Lamara is 33 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.
Olympique Akbou next, and one man in the MC El Bayadh dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
The words a physio says slowly. 87 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.
0‑3 to CR Belouizdad, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what MC El Bayadh can pretend not to have heard.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
In brief
The dugoutImad Eddine Azzi is still being punished for one mistake
94 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. MC El Bayadh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Benjamin Santelli 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Karim Haddad after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Marco Decherf is 20, and MC El Bayadh have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.