Marked for Umar Yusuf
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad22 Feb 2027
A fracture rules Saidu Hamisu out for 95 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Katsina United will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad22 Feb 2027
8 saves: Umar Yusuf was the team
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
Yusuf Umar, 18, steals the show — 8.18
Marked 8.18 at 18, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Market22 Feb 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Muhammad Suleiman will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Katsina United the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Samson Obi and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match20 Feb 2027
David Onovo scored, and precious little else went right: 2‑3 to Kwara United, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
The terraces22 Feb 2027
The crowd has taken to Yusuf Umar
At 18 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.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sani Faisal was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
Marked 8.10 — 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad15 Feb 2027
A fracture rules Saidu Hamisu out for 103 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Katsina United will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad15 Feb 2027
7 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
Up for the corner, and Michael Okoro delivers — 7.97
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Michael Okoro scored, was marked 7.97, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Match13 Feb 2027
A 2‑0 win over Kano Pillars, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Match13 Feb 2027
5 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Kano Pillars were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Usman Barau and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad15 Feb 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Umar Yusuf and Katsina United agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
The dugout15 Feb 2027
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Dennis Moffi, on a 2‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match3 Feb 2027
Kun Khalifat ended it 1‑3. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Squad8 Feb 2027
A fracture rules Saidu Hamisu out for 111 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Katsina United will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market8 Feb 2027
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Katsina United people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Squad8 Feb 2027
7 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Match6 Feb 2027
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad8 Feb 2027
59 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Transfer targets8 Feb 2027
Katsina United asked and Bendel Insurance said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Match6 Feb 2027
Katsina United are shipping goals every week
Two or more conceded in each of the last 4 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
The dugout8 Feb 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Samson Obi, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad4 Jan 2027
149 days out for Saidu Hamisu after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Katsina United will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Two goals and a mark of 8.98 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 24. 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.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Samson Obi in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Katsina United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Umar Yusuf is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Boardroom4 Jan 2027
4 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Match2 Jan 2027
2‑3 to El-Kanemi Warriors, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Market4 Jan 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Alex Obafemi has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market4 Jan 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Kelechi Babatunde has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
4 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Match12 Sep 2026
4‑0, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 25. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market14 Sep 2026
The bid was some way short and Katsina United did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Uche Collins was on a different afternoon to everybody else
10.00. 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 terraces14 Sep 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 17-year-old it feels ownership of. Muhammad Suleiman 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Sani Faisal 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
26 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad14 Sep 2026
No place for Emmanuel Onu in the new shape
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Katsina United are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager’s verdict
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The dugout
Tunde Micheal does not fit this one
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The dugout
Umar Yusuf gets it from the manager