Two goals and a mark of 8.79 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Albert Bukari was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Abraham Mensah. 2‑0 against Hasaacas, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Patrick Blanchard could afford to be generous.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Abraham Acquah trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Albert Bukari was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Jonathan Ayew and BA All Stars agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
The dugout11 Dec 2028
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 Patrick Blanchard left the room before anybody could ask which.
Nobody at BA All Stars 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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Nana Nuhu
Supporters organise against the BA All Stars board
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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jeffrey Annan is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Jeffrey 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.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Abdul Afful 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 BA All Stars go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Words at BA All Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Albert Bukari 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.
BA All Stars have made the call to Hasaacas. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Jeffrey Annan is on it.
Dehinde Ibrahim and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad17 May 2027
Abdul Afful 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Kamaldeen Essien is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dehinde Ibrahim trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The language is arriving, the jokes are landing, and there is somebody at the next peg to talk to. None of it appears in a scouting report and all of it shows up on the pitch.
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Jeffrey Owusu has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.