“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what ASO Chlef can pretend not to have heard.
Samuel Ayanrinde 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.
Squad12 Mar 2029
Noa Cervantes 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.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Abderrahmane Atal has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
The terraces5 Feb 2029
The mood at ASO Chlef has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around ASO Chlef 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. ES Mostaganem moved on, Sofiane Kacem reports back to ASO Chlef, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Kevyn Montaño commits to ASO Chlef for another 2 years.
Squad5 Feb 2029
Words at ASO Chlef training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Noa Cervantes 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.
Dalil Adel Hassen Khodja 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what ASO Chlef can pretend not to have heard.
17 points and a position everybody in the ground can do the arithmetic on. The songs have stopped being about the team and started being about surviving, which is a different noise entirely.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at ASO Chlef is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Samuel Ayanrinde 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.
27 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. ASO Chlef lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Edward Ledlum will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around ASO Chlef the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Samuel Ayanrinde 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ASO Chlef this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Kokou Avotor damages knee ligaments — 129 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 129 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.
A season average of 7.08 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. ASO Chlef know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Three points for ASO Chlef, 3‑2 the final word against Paradou in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad27 Mar 2028
Words at ASO Chlef training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Noa Cervantes 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.
Kokou Avotor 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 ratings27 Mar 2028
Noa Cervantes was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.91. 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.
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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Alege Mahee is living that version at ASO Chlef, and it tends to show in the first month.
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad6 Mar 2028
Noa Cervantes 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ASO Chlef this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Mustapha Alili. 1‑0 against Olympique Akbou, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.30 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.