Marked for Uche Onyemaechi
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad5 Oct 2026
Tosin Oyedokun and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Ikorodu City training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Seun Agboola 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Musa Malik named in the team of the month
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Musa Malik is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Squad5 Oct 2026
He is 24, he is from here, and the shirt he was raised to wear has gone to somebody bought for it. The academy staff have noticed, and so has the town.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
“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.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Sep 2026
Only the photograph left for Samuel Ezekiel
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Samuel Ezekiel will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Ikorodu City the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Tosin Oyedokun 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Seun Agboola 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market31 Aug 2026
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Rangers International waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Ikorodu City is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Marked 7.79 at 19, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Market31 Aug 2026
“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 Ikorodu City, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 23. 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Tosin Oyedokun 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 terraces31 Aug 2026
At 19 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Uche Onyemaechi and Ikorodu City agree another 2 years.
Match29 Aug 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
In brief
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The dugout
Seun Agboola gets it from the manager
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The dugout
The view from the dugout
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The dugout
Aliu Salawudeen knocks on the manager’s door