Marked for Daniel Atiemo
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad6 Dec 2027
144 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. BA All Stars lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The terraces6 Dec 2027
Anger at BA All Stars spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Boardroom6 Dec 2027
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Isaac Inusah has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Market6 Dec 2027
“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 The request is on a desk at BA All Stars, and it is not being withdrawn.
Match4 Dec 2027
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.
Market6 Dec 2027
Mohammed Nuhu has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around BA All Stars they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad6 Dec 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” BA All Stars may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad6 Dec 2027
Ezequiel Bustamante 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.
Squad6 Dec 2027
Abdulaziz Dalhatu 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces13 Sep 2027
Anger at BA All Stars spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Match11 Sep 2027
Beaten 1‑4 by Hearts of Oak, and beaten everywhere it matters. The inquest starts on the training pitch on Monday morning.
Market13 Sep 2027
Baba Ayew puts it in writing
“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 BA All Stars, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad13 Sep 2027
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Felix Amoah is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Market13 Sep 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at BA All Stars is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Ezequiel Bustamante 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.
Squad13 Sep 2027
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Boardroom13 Sep 2027
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market12 Jul 2027
Bernard Nuhu has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around BA All Stars they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market12 Jul 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what BA All Stars can pretend not to have heard.
Market12 Jul 2027
Remo Stars come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and BA All Stars did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom7 Jun 2027
Isaac Inusah has until the next board meeting
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at BA All Stars can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Market7 Jun 2027
Bernard Nuhu hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what BA All Stars can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom7 Jun 2027
The BA All Stars board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Squad7 Jun 2027
Ezequiel Bustamante 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.
Market7 Jun 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Albert Schlupp has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at BA All Stars.
Squad7 Jun 2027
Kwame Bukari 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.
Squad7 Jun 2027
A change in the dugout is not one story, it is twenty-five of them. This is Ezequiel Bustamante's: he was somebody's player, and now he has to be somebody else's, starting from nothing.
Squad7 Jun 2027
The manager makes an example of Baba Amoah
“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.
Boardroom7 Jun 2027
BA All Stars pull $97.2K back off the table
The money that was there in the summer is not there now. Nobody upstairs calls this a change of ambition, and everybody downstairs reads it as one.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad31 May 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at BA All Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 May 2027
Words at BA All Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Abdulaziz Dalhatu 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.
Squad31 May 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.