“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 The request is on a desk at Berekum Chelsea, and it is not being withdrawn.
Richmond Lamptey 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.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 37 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Berekum Chelsea is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
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.
Nobody at Berekum Chelsea 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Johnson Amuzu signs something — a contract at Berekum Chelsea or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Dickson Sakabutu has written the date down.
In brief
The dugoutMarkson Ojobo knocks on the manager's door
A season average of 7.05 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Berekum Chelsea know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Berekum Chelsea this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kwesi Sorotu Badori 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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Berekum Chelsea, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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 Marvin Owusu is on it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Berekum Chelsea this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is 21, he is averaging 7.01, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Jonathan Inusah on a 3‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Berekum Chelsea this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 20. 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Johnson Amuzu 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Augustine Agyapong 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.
10 combined actions and 7.45. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
8.07. 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.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Heart of Lions will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 2‑3 Kwame Asamoah left the room before anybody could ask which.
Every debut is a small story about the future: Michael Noumon, 20 years old, off the academy pitches and into the first team. The parents in the stand will keep the programme.
Nobody at Heart of Lions is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Heart of Lions have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
“If we are going to be beaten, let it not be because somebody in here could not be bothered.” He stood up and said it in front of everybody, which is a thing a squad remembers about a man for years.
In brief
MarketThe window shut and Denis Hutor is still in the building