Marked for Odilo Pinutusta
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad8 Mar 2027
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CotonTchad lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Louai Taha breaks a bone — 67 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 67 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Match6 Mar 2027
The wait goes on for CotonTchad
5 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.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Meshack Maphangule commits to CotonTchad for another 2 years.
Match6 Mar 2027
4 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Squad8 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CotonTchad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match6 Mar 2027
AS DGSSIE left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Boardroom8 Mar 2027
CotonTchad release $30.2K for the manager
The board have put money on the table rather than an encouraging word. What happens to it now is somebody else's problem, and somebody else's job.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Seth Clark runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad15 Feb 2027
43 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CotonTchad lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Louai Taha breaks a bone — 88 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 88 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Finn McKenlay 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.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Stephen Okola has improved at 29, 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.
Match13 Feb 2027
0‑1 to Aiglons, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 11. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
A mark of 5.49 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
A mark of 5.54 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
Marked 5.67, and generously at that. Nothing came off, and by the end the crowd had stopped expecting it to.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
A fracture rules Dimitri Mbele out for 48 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CotonTchad will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market14 Sep 2026
So close: Mahamat Adda’s move dies late
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Renaissance moved on, Mahamat Adda reports back to CotonTchad, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Finn McKenlay is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad14 Sep 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 CotonTchad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Seth Clark has improved at 25, 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.
Market14 Sep 2026
It is the least glamorous business a club does and the reason seasons do not collapse in February. Odilo Pinutusta is here for the weeks when three men are injured and somebody still has to play.