Stephen Badu 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at Aduana Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daouda Sidibé 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Mohammed Bamba’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Aduana Stars needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Aduana Stars, 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 Abidemi Alli is on it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Two goals and a mark of 8.24 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Stephen Badu 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.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniel Awuni was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“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 dugout19 Oct 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 1‑2 Thomas Nuhu left the room before anybody could ask which.
Successful dribbles: 15. 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.
In brief
SquadAduana Stars are still strangers to each other
Stephen Badu 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Abidemi Alli has, at Aduana Stars, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
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.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
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.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Hearts of Oak in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Ikorodu City go through and Warri Wolves go home, 0‑2 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Ezekiel Oroh had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Kano Pillars were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Warri Wolves they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The deal with Ikorodu City is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Meshack Ubochioma 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.
Warri Wolves asked and Plateau United said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.