Marked for Milad Nekounam
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad14 Jun 2032
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Kun Khalifat this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Jun 2032
Kaynan 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.
Match12 Jun 2032
Bayelsa United left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad14 Jun 2032
“The easiest signature of my career.” Milad Nekounam and Kun Khalifat agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad14 Jun 2032
The manager makes an example of William Kalu
“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.
Player ratings14 Jun 2032
Successful dribbles: 12. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad16 Feb 2032
76 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Kun Khalifat lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match14 Feb 2032
6 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.
Market16 Feb 2032
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match14 Feb 2032
6 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Kun Khalifat can tell you which week it ends in.
Match14 Feb 2032
Kun Khalifat make home a hard place to visit
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad16 Feb 2032
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Kun Khalifat this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings16 Feb 2032
22 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Squad16 Feb 2032
Kaynan 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.
Squad16 Feb 2032
Nobody at Kun Khalifat 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match15 Feb 2031
No end in sight to Kun Khalifat's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Kun Khalifat has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad17 Feb 2031
Akpan Nsikak-Abong 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.
Squad17 Feb 2031
Words at Kun Khalifat training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kaynan 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.
Player ratings17 Feb 2031
A performance of 8.07 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Match15 Feb 2031
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad17 Feb 2031
The manager makes an example of Mohamed Youssef
“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.