Marked for Yves Huet
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Market17 Aug 2026
OGC Nice come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Chamois Niortais did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
$5.8M was the most the club would pay and OGC Nice were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
No sign of nerves from Gabriel François at 21 — 8.07
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Gabriel François did not need any: 8.07, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at FC Nantes is saying, and nobody at Chamois Niortais is enjoying the guessing.
Match15 Aug 2026
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Yves Huet and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
4 academy players handed senior numbers at Chamois Niortais
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
At 21 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad10 Aug 2026
The match ball belongs to Rémi Ménard, whose 5 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Squad10 Aug 2026
The match ball belongs to Yves Huet, whose 5 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Match8 Aug 2026
10‑0, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Market10 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market10 Aug 2026
“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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Luc Barbier, 17, plays like he has been here for years — 7.69
A mark of 7.69 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 17-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Yves Huet and Chamois Niortais agree another 3 years.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
The deal with FC Nantes 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.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad3 Aug 2026
The match ball belongs to Yves Huet, whose 4 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Match1 Aug 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 5‑1 against Stade Lavallois, and it could have been more.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Luc Barbier could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 7.47
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 7.47, 0 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Yves Huet in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chamois Niortais this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
Stade Lavallois wanted more than $330.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Market3 Aug 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Chamois Niortais heard it as anything else.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Yves Huet was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.90. 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.