Every run ends on an afternoon somebody had marked down as routine. This one went 12 matches, which is long enough that a town had stopped counting, and short enough that it will remember exactly who stopped it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Ittihad have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Abdelghani Mohamed 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.
0‑1 to Al Ahly, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Mohamed Tony 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 dugout21 Dec 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 0‑1 Fathy El Wensh left the room before anybody could ask which.
Lawrence Nicholas 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.
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.
100 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ittihad lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Successful dribbles: 33. 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Ittihad training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Isaac Saviour 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.
Youssef Nader 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
12 new faces, and Ittihad are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Fathy El Wensh after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
The words a physio says slowly. 44 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ittihad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Moamen Sherif is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Isaac Saviour 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 dugout5 Oct 2026
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.” Fathy El Wensh chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Ismaily? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Ittihad people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Everything agreed with Arab Contractors, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Masr El Makasa have kept their man, and Ittihad go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Lawrence Nicholas 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ali Elneny has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ittihad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Mohamed Tony 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.
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.