“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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout12 Mar 2029
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Osman Asante left the room before anybody could ask which.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Bernard Sulemana trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“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.
6 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Liberty Professionals has to find a result from somewhere.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Oscar Gqeke will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Liberty Professionals the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Kwame Wakaso 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.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Liberty Professionals will try again when the window opens; Aduana Stars may not be selling by then.
“The easiest signature of my career.” David Mohammed and Liberty Professionals agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
The dugout19 Feb 2029
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Osman Asante left the room before anybody could ask which.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
The deal with Great Olympics is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Kwame Wakaso 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.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Kwame Wakaso has improved at 25, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Great Olympics have kept their man, and Liberty Professionals go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Liberty Professionals can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
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.
“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.
Gladson Annan 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Francis Acquah 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Liberty Professionals, another week without a signature from Joke Efevwerha.
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.