“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 The request is on a desk at Pro Vercelli, and it is not being withdrawn.
Ilario Iotti 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.
Squad10 Jun 2030
Words at Pro Vercelli training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gabriel Serrano 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Narcisse Youssouf and Pro Vercelli agree another 3 years.
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 Mattia Del Favero is on it.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
90 minutes played. Marius Youssouf found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and AS Algoy went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Stars Jeunes Talents they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Adam Tokindang did not need any: 7.89, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Successful dribbles: 18. 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Stars Jeunes Talents they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“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 The request is on a desk at Stars Jeunes Talents, and it is not being withdrawn.
a squad player 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.
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.
A new partner, a signature and a photograph nobody will remember. It funds a fortnight of wages, which is more than most headlines on this page can say for themselves.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Ali Oumar signs something — a contract at Stars Jeunes Talents or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
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 Mahamat Djimet is on it.
1‑4 to AS PSI, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Stars Jeunes Talents is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
“I did not go to Foullah Edifice to sit and watch. I want to come back to Stars Jeunes Talents and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 17 matches say the rest.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Moussa Mbainaissem after 1‑4, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
In brief
SquadIssa Souleymane falls out with a teammate over standards
The words a physio says slowly. 31 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Stars Jeunes Talents they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“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 Stars Jeunes Talents, and it is not being withdrawn.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ali Mbainaissem did not need any: 7.67, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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.
Marked 8.48 — 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.
“I watch every Stars Jeunes Talents game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Foullah Edifice runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.