The offer from Fauve Azur Elite for Arsene Mekila was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Housseini Ousmanou 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Yacine Boulegheb is living that version at Gazelle Garoua, and it tends to show in the first month.
10 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Canon Yaounde will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Holivan Almeida has pre-agreed a move to Gazelle Garoua, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Gazelle Garoua are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Signings arrive with a picture of the club in their head, and this one’s picture was bigger than the building. He will play well and he will be gone, in that order, and everybody knows it.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Arsene Mekila will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Gazelle Garoua the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Gazelle Garoua can pretend not to have heard.
The name of Sony Farell Evina has come up in conversations Gazelle Garoua were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Gazelle Garoua have gone to Fauve Azur Elite with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Blaise Loïc Tsagué 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.
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.
Gazelle Garoua have made the call to PWD Bamenda. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Nobody at Gazelle Garoua 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.
In brief
The dugoutMaël Monyebe asks for a word with the manager
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Gazelle Garoua they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Jacques Kotto 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.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Words at Gazelle Garoua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Junior Leboum Meli 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.
Dynamo Douala have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Ukashatu Muazu and Gazelle Garoua agree another 3 years.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Arsene Mekila will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Gazelle Garoua the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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 Gazelle Garoua, and it is not being withdrawn.
Blaise Loïc Tsagué 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ukashatu Muazu has just signed for Gazelle Garoua, and for once the answer mattered.
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Words at Gazelle Garoua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jacques Kotto 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.
Cotonsport Garoua have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Gazelle Garoua they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Blaise Loïc Tsagué 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.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Abdessamad Bounaama commits to Gazelle Garoua for another 1 years.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Words at Gazelle Garoua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Prat Manyo 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.
The dugout17 Apr 2028
The manager has not finished forgetting Marius Kalgong's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
“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 Gazelle Garoua, and it is not being withdrawn.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Maxime Embolo after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Squad27 Dec 2027
Words at Gazelle Garoua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Prat Manyo 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 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 Junior Leboum Meli is on it.
Maël Monyebe, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.06
A mark of 8.06 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
At 20 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.
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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Didas Miafang and Gazelle Garoua agree another 3 years.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Maxime Embolo could afford to be generous.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Gazelle Garoua, and both men came out saying it was fine.