Marked for Bobby Yahouedeou
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad30 Jun 2031
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 25 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market30 Jun 2031
The phone has started ringing about Idrissa Guèye again, and this time the name on the line is Dijon. FC Metz are listening politely and promising nothing.
Market30 Jun 2031
FC Metz say no — this time
The offer from Nimes for Evan Irene was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Market30 Jun 2031
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at FC Metz is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad30 Jun 2031
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Metz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Jun 2031
Words at FC Metz training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Habib Diallo 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market9 Sep 2030
“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 The request is on a desk at FC Metz, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad9 Sep 2030
A one-man rearguard from Pape Sy
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad9 Sep 2030
Evan Irene: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” FC Metz have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad9 Sep 2030
Matteo Bianchetti 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.
Squad9 Sep 2030
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bobby Yahouedeou is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Player ratings9 Sep 2030
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market9 Sep 2030
Add another name to the list: FC Lorient have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Mathis Holo. The answer from FC Metz has not changed — yet.
Player ratings9 Sep 2030
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.11, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Match7 Sep 2030
A 1‑0 win over AC Ajaccio, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Aug 2030
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason FC Metz will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market12 Aug 2030
“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 FC Metz, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings12 Aug 2030
Age has not caught Gauthier Hein yet — 9.37
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.37 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market12 Aug 2030
Only the photograph left for Evan Irene
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Evan Irene will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around FC Metz the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad12 Aug 2030
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bobby Yahouedeou is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Aug 2030
Habib Diallo 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 ratings12 Aug 2030
A performance of 9.21 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Match10 Aug 2030
A 2‑1 win over Bourg-Peronnas, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The terraces12 Aug 2030
At 23 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.