Two goals and a mark of 9.55 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Moussa Hissein did not need any: 7.67, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
A season average of 7.35 with 15 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
Squad12 Apr 2032
Words at US Moursal training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Issa Moustapha 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.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Gazelle spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
Nobody at US Moursal 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 81 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.
Player ratings12 Jan 2032
Ali Allamine, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.02
A mark of 8.02 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.
A performance of 8.22 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings12 Jan 2032
Issa Youssouf was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.21. 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.
Nobody at US Moursal 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 88 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.
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Player ratings5 Jan 2032
Ali Allamine, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.03
A mark of 8.03 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.
A season average of 7.45 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. US Moursal know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
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. US Moursal will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 7 goals between US Moursal and Gazelle, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
In brief
Player ratingsIssa Youssouf was on a different afternoon to everybody else
Player ratingsDjibrine Adoum did the work nobody counts — 7.75
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.
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 hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ali Allamine did not need any: 8.33, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Marked 7.33 on 19 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
7 goals in one match, Ali Allamine on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of US Moursal and Galactik.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at US Moursal 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. US Moursal know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
3 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.
Squad23 Dec 2030
Words at US Moursal training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Issa Moustapha 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.
Marked 8.23 — 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.
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.
Nobody at US Moursal is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 15 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Abdoulaye Allamine provided it, and the 8.18 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings4 Nov 2030
Moussa Hissein, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.23
A mark of 8.23 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.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.10 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about US Moursal and AS PSI in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Moussa Hissein is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.