Marked for Koceila Ait Idir
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market21 Aug 2028
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Osagie Onisodumeya will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around ES Mostaganem the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Koceila Ait Idir is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Aug 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ES Mostaganem this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Jul 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” ES Mostaganem may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Alonso Hernández 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.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Words at ES Mostaganem training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Youness Mokhtar 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.
Squad3 Jul 2028
“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.
Boardroom3 Jul 2028
ES Mostaganem sign 5 boys into the academy
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.
Market3 Jul 2028
Boualem Sryer returns from a loan that gave him nothing
2 appearances and 0 goals is not a season, it is a year somebody has lost. Whether that is his fault, the borrowing club's or the people who arranged it is the argument the next few weeks will have.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad20 Mar 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mehdi Zeffane
48 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. ES Mostaganem lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings20 Mar 2028
Abdelrahman Mano, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.88
A mark of 8.88 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Market20 Mar 2028
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Boualem Amine Masmoudi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around ES Mostaganem the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Match18 Mar 2028
Whatever happens, ES Mostaganem do not lose
8 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad20 Mar 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ES Mostaganem this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match18 Mar 2028
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Squad20 Mar 2028
Words at ES Mostaganem training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cemran Dansin 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.
The terraces20 Mar 2028
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Koceila Ait Idir 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market26 Jul 2027
Reda Benchaa hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what JS Kabylie can pretend not to have heard.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Ryad Boudebouz 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.
Market26 Jul 2027
Add another name to the list: Petrojet have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Seif Benrabah. The answer from JS Kabylie has not changed — yet.
Market26 Jul 2027
JS Saoura are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. JS Kabylie will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Koceila Ait Idir 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.
Squad26 Jul 2027
“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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad19 Jul 2027
Fares Nechat: 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.” JS Kabylie have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad19 Jul 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 JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Jul 2027
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Koceila Ait Idir 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom5 Jul 2027
Continental nights are coming to JS Kabylie
Qualification is secured, and next season the big floodlit nights are continental ones. For the players it is a stage; for the accounts it is a lifeline; for the supporters it is passports.
Squad5 Jul 2027
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and JS Kabylie have had the benefit of it.
Squad5 Jul 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 JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Jul 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Arthur Bada and JS Kabylie agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Boardroom5 Jul 2027
JS Kabylie release $350.0K 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.
Boardroom5 Jul 2027
Intake day at the JS Kabylie academy
7 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
Market5 Jul 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Reda Benchaa has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at JS Kabylie.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Koceila Ait Idir 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.
Market5 Jul 2027
Contract settled, hands shaken, no fee changing hands. Nadir Yakoubi leaves JS Kabylie the quiet way, and the wage bill breathes a little easier.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Age has not caught Cheick Diabaté yet — 7.88
At 39 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.88 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Cheick Diabaté 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.
Match14 Nov 2026
A 1‑0 win over ASO Chlef, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Hamza Mouali gets it from the manager
“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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Koceila Ait Idir 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.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Defensive actions: 13, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad9 Nov 2026
Ryad Boudebouz 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.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
A performance of 8.04 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Babacar Sarr gets it from the manager
“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.