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.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Benjamin Merba has come out of that comparison in the side, and Foullah Edifice have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Somebody watched every match in the division at the weekend and decided he was the best thing in any of them. A small honour, and most careers end without one.
Off the academy pitches and onto a senior team sheet at 15. The debut is the easy part; the second appearance is the one every young player has to earn.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Joël Djingar trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
1 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.
With 8 players away on international duty the sessions are small and the manager can actually hear himself. It is the one break in the season, and it never quite feels like one.
At 20 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Abdoulaye Tokindang is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
Abdelaziz Issa 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 offer from Binga for Benjamin Merba 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.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Foullah Edifice have done the hard part with Stars Jeunes Talents, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
7 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
Joël Djingar 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.