Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“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 The request is on a desk at Liberty Professionals, and it is not being withdrawn.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Kamaldeen Appiah is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Liberty Professionals can tell you which week it ends in.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Baba Atiemo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Liberty Professionals has to find a result from somewhere.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Baba Atiemo 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.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout30 Nov 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 0‑2 Jonathan Atiemo left the room before anybody could ask which.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kamaldeen Nuhu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“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 The request is on a desk at Liberty Professionals, and it is not being withdrawn.
Baba Djiku 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.
A performance of 8.10 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Isaac Asante 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.
It needed Edmund Djiku to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against New Edubiase United, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Jonathan Atiemo after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Nobody at Liberty Professionals is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.