38 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The offer from Ashanti Gold for Osman Baba 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.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Liberty Professionals have had the benefit of it.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Dari Haruna from Asante Kotoko for $210.0K, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
The words a physio says slowly. 58 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.
16 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Seth Paintsil 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 words a physio says slowly. 65 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $45.0K for Amos Owusu, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
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.
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.
He is going to Vélez, the club has $7.5M 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.
Seth Paintsil 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Liberty Professionals, and 9 appearances in 44 say he has earned the hearing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Liberty Professionals may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
In brief
SquadKwadwo Sulemana falls out with a teammate over standards
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 14 actions, 6.84, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Nobody at Liberty Professionals 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.
Contract settled, hands shaken, no fee changing hands. Jonathan Ayew leaves Liberty Professionals the quiet way, and the wage bill breathes a little easier.
In brief
Player ratingsThe pass was always on for Osman Baba
Position 1, 73 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 10 actions, 6.84, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Liberty Professionals, and 9 appearances in 32 say he has earned the hearing.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Kamaldeen Annan.
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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.76 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Seth Paintsil and Liberty Professionals agree another 3 years.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 11 combined actions and a mark of 6.89, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. Great Olympics tried to reorganise, Liberty Professionals did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
The offer from IFK Norrkoping for Osman Owusu 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.
14 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.86 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Seth Paintsil 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.
Marked 8.30 — 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.
Marked 8.10. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Liberty Professionals.
In brief
SquadOsman Baba has become a man the manager trusts
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.02 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Marked 8.33. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Liberty Professionals.
In brief
Player ratingsAbeiku Asamoah was on a different afternoon to everybody else
BA All Stars will want this one forgotten quickly: 5‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Liberty Professionals were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Two goals and a mark of 9.36 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
13 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Seth Paintsil 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.
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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Osman Owusu is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.06 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
12 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Liberty Professionals and WAFA, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Liberty Professionals have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
Kamaldeen Ofori was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.39. 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.
Marked 8.24. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Liberty Professionals.
Position 1, 55 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 4‑0 against Hearts of Oak, and it could have been more.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
A brace, and Osman Baba takes the afternoon — 9.07
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Osman Baba provided it, and the 9.07 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
A brace, and Osman Owusu takes the afternoon — 8.29
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Osman Owusu provided it, and the 8.29 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Liberty Professionals will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
“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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
In brief
SquadA place in the month's best eleven for Seth Paintsil
27 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Liberty Professionals can pretend not to have heard.
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Osman Baba. 2‑0 against New Edubiase United, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.24 — 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.
34 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
41 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
8 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.72, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
A brace, and Osman Baba takes the afternoon — 9.23
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Osman Baba provided it, and the 9.23 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
48 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
7 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Liberty Professionals can pretend not to have heard.
Seth Paintsil 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.
55 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The 86th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Osman Baba decided nobody was going anywhere. Ashanti Gold had no time left to answer.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Osman Baba. 2‑1 against Ashanti Gold, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
3 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
In brief
Player ratingsBoth jobs done by Seth Paintsil — 7.08
Player ratingsThe afternoon belonged to Osman Baba
62 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
5 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Seth Paintsil 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Kamaldeen Ofori 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.
76 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Liberty Professionals can pretend not to have heard.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Seth Paintsil 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 2‑0 win over Aduana Stars, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Osman Baba was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.15. 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kwadwo Sulemana 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.
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Osman Owusu was the best thing in any of them.
97 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
6 goals in one match, Kamaldeen Ofori on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Liberty Professionals and WAFA.
Marked 8.01 — 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.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 9 combined actions and a mark of 6.95, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
104 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Liberty Professionals lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
3 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Samuel Owusu, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 8.05
A mark of 8.05 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
5 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
“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.
Seth Paintsil 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.
In brief
Player ratingsNinety minutes of Osman Baba at his very best
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Osman Owusu was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.13. 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.
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.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 16 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.96 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Liberty Professionals can pretend not to have heard.
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Christian Atiemo is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Edmund Addo has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Liberty Professionals will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The offer from Bechem United for Osman Baba 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.
“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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Osman Owusu and Liberty Professionals agree another 4 years.
Seth Paintsil 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.