98 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Liberty Professionals, and it is not being withdrawn.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.
It needed Kamaldeen Annan to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against BA All Stars, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
123 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 is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.92 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Samuel Schlupp provided it, and the 8.55 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Bernard Waris, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.50
A mark of 8.50 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Abubakar Adams is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Mustafa Yahaya 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 18 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.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Afriyie Kudus’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Liberty Professionals.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Afriyie Kudus was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.10. 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.
7 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.
“I did not go to BA All Stars to sit and watch. I want to come back to Liberty Professionals and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 5 matches say the rest.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Liberty Professionals have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
“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 offer from Ashanti Gold for Samuel Schlupp 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.
Mehdi Khallati 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
“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.
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. $190.0K for Abubakar Adams, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kamaldeen Annan 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.
Mehdi Khallati 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.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Liberty Professionals know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
It is the least glamorous business a club does and the reason seasons do not collapse in February. Cohen Stander is here for the weeks when three men are injured and somebody still has to play.