Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Shaab will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The words a physio says slowly. 80 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Al Shaab, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer went to Al Ain this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
$850.0K on the table at Al Wasl. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The offer from Al Fujairah for Hamdan Omar 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.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $1.3M — a club that wants Hazim Abbas enough to be asked twice.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Al Shaab are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Al Ain have kept their man, and Al Shaab go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
139 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Al Shaab lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Al Shaab will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Shaab will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Saeid Gholizadeh 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Al Shaab know it.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Al Shaab will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Mohamed Hussain signs something — a contract at Al Shaab or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Al Shaab. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
The dugoutHamdan Omar asks for a word with the manager
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
7.57, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Al Shaab can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Amer Rashid 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Majed Suqrat after 1‑4, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 45 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
A point taken on 93 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
“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 dugout26 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Majed Suqrat chose the glass-half-full version of 2‑2; the supporters left with the other one.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Walid Al Kamali was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
6 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
4 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.