A mark of 7.77 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Ahmat Hissein 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.
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.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout28 Dec 2026
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 1‑3 Mahamat Haroun 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.
90 minutes played. Abdramane Mbainaissem found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Aiglons went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
“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 The request is on a desk at AS Etat Major, and it is not being withdrawn.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Abdramane Mbainaissem did not need any: 7.68, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Youssouf Bechir was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
5 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Aiglons were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Abdramane Mbainaissem. 1‑0 against Aiglons, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AS Etat Major 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 Youssouf Bechir was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Youssouf Bechir trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 Abdramane Mbainaissem is on it.
The standards have slipped, and in a building where everybody watches everybody it has not gone unremarked. This is how a player loses a place before he loses one.
0‑5 to CotonTchad, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 9 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
AS PSI go through and AS Etat Major go home, 1‑4 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AS Etat Major can pretend not to have heard.
Ahmat Hissein 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.
In brief
Player ratingsHassan Haroun beats them one at a time
SquadWords at AS Etat Major training over how hard people work
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Brahim Abakar
130 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. AS Etat Major lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AS Etat Major can pretend not to have heard.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. AS Etat Major have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.