Marked for Abdelrahman Ramadan
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings4 Sep 2028
Successful dribbles: 44. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings4 Sep 2028
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.97 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market4 Sep 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad4 Sep 2028
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Abdulhadi Al-Harajin and Al-Fayha agree another 2 years.
Squad4 Sep 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al-Fayha this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Chris Smalling 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.
Boardroom4 Sep 2028
The owner puts $557.1K into Al-Fayha
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
Boardroom4 Sep 2028
167% of the income goes out in wages at Al-Fayha
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
The terraces4 Sep 2028
At 21 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Jul 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 23 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market24 Jul 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad24 Jul 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al-Fayha this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Jul 2028
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.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Mansor Al-Beshe has improved at 28, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Boardroom24 Jul 2028
Al-Fayha cannot sign anybody
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Jun 2028
A fracture rules Mikel Villanueva out for 36 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al-Fayha will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad19 Jun 2028
Essam Bahri damages knee ligaments — 43 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 43 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.
The terraces19 Jun 2028
Supporters turn on the $4.9M sale of Fashion Sakala
He is going to Al-Nassr, the club has $4.9M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Market19 Jun 2028
Fashion Sakala has left for Al-Nassr in a $4.9M deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Market19 Jun 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad19 Jun 2028
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market19 Jun 2028
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad19 Jun 2028
Mikel Villanueva 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.
Market19 Jun 2028
He is 19, and the scouting reports agree on the only line that matters: the ceiling. Signings like this are lottery tickets written by professionals.
In brief
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Boardroom
Al-Fayha bank $433.3K from an old deal
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The terraces
Supporters make their feelings known about Silvère Ganvoula