4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Aly Abeid 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.
A mark of 7.78, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
The dugout24 Dec 2029
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Karim Bensebaini kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Nobody at JS Kabylie will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Walid Khermouche was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Two goals and a mark of 8.82 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
At 39 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.98 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around JS Kabylie they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Aly Abeid 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Billal Messaoudi is on it.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 87th, and JS Saoura spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around JS Kabylie they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Aly Abeid 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Billal Messaoudi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around JS Kabylie they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
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.
With 4 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Aly Abeid is on it.
The dugout15 Oct 2029
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Karim Bensebaini chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
Successful dribbles: 31. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Islam Eddine Slimane Tichtich provided it, and the 8.42 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Yakoub Guellati will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around JS Kabylie the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Aly Abeid 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.
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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Imadeddine Boubekeur has just signed for JS Kabylie, and for once the answer mattered.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around JS Kabylie they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. JS Saoura moved on, Hatem El Fegoun reports back to JS Kabylie, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
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.
Nobody at JS Kabylie will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Paradou waiting with a shirt. Nobody at JS Kabylie is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at JS Kabylie is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Hatem El Fegoun reports back to JS Kabylie with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
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.
Squad23 Jul 2029
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Billal Messaoudi 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.
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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and JS Saoura waiting with a shirt. Nobody at JS Kabylie is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at JS Kabylie is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Billal Messaoudi is on it.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Jaredi Teixeira, and the manager let it.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mostapha Rezkallah Bott 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around JS Kabylie they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Squad21 May 2029
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Billal Messaoudi 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.
Nobody at JS Kabylie will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Yakoub Guellati will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around JS Kabylie the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Aly Abeid is on it.
Position 2 on 60 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Yakoub Guellati will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around JS Kabylie the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.98, and 2 involvements.
With 4 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.
Nobody at JS Kabylie will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
At 39 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.23 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at JS Kabylie is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Squad26 Feb 2029
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Billal Messaoudi 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.
8.33. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Two sides from the top of the table, one afternoon, and a month of talk decided in ninety minutes. JS Kabylie will not use the word title this week and will not stop thinking it.
The dugout26 Feb 2029
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Karim Bensebaini kept it short after the 2‑1 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
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.
JS Kabylie asked and USM Alger said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Yakoub Guellati will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around JS Kabylie the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Alexis Guendouz, and the manager let it.
Squad22 Jan 2029
Reda Benchaa 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.
Successful dribbles: 17. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
3‑0, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Transfer targets8 Jan 2029
$5.1M settles it between the clubs for Marwan Ateya
USM Alger have accepted the money. What JS Kabylie do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
90 minutes played. Salah Eddine Bouziani found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and CS Constantine went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and MC El Bayadh waiting with a shirt. Nobody at JS Kabylie is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Two goals and a mark of 8.03 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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 JS Kabylie, and it is not being withdrawn.
The words a physio says slowly. 80 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.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Billal Messaoudi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Successful dribbles: 19. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Karim Bensebaini after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
142 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. JS Kabylie lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and JS Saoura waiting with a shirt. Nobody at JS Kabylie is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Position 3, 61 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
“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.
Ryad Boudebouz 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at JS Kabylie, and 11 appearances in 50 say he has earned the hearing.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mohamed Réda Hamidi is on it.
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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. JS Kabylie will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Alexis Guendouz 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.
“I watch every JS Kabylie game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at MC El Bayadh runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at JS Kabylie, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Ryad Boudebouz 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at JS Kabylie, and 11 appearances in 42 say he has earned the hearing.
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.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at JS Kabylie. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
The dugoutFaouzi Mandi asks for a word with the manager
Some goals win a match and some take one off somebody else. Billal Messaoudi scored in the 87th minute, ES Setif had already begun thinking about the journey home, and JS Kabylie took the lot.
Position 3, 61 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Ryad Boudebouz 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 award is a small thing with a heavy meaning: for four weeks nobody in this division did his job better. JS Kabylie have the trophy on a shelf and the player in the side.
Position 3, 52 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
“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 JS Kabylie, and it is not being withdrawn.
Ryad Boudebouz 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.
Successful dribbles: 17. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at JS Kabylie, and 10 appearances in 34 say he has earned the hearing.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at JS Kabylie pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 1 arrived, 3 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Ryad Boudebouz 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.
“I watch every JS Kabylie game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at MC El Bayadh runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Aimen Lahmeri will call it something else in private.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Billal Messaoudi has come out of that comparison in the side, and JS Kabylie have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.