Marked for Majid Torabi
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad11 Feb 2030
Lucas Suárez 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.
Match9 Feb 2030
Lucas Suárez scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑2 to Al-Batin, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Squad11 Feb 2030
Tohir Qudratov 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.
Market11 Feb 2030
The phone has started ringing about Nasser Al-Subaie again, and this time the name on the line is Hajer. Al-Mojzel are listening politely and promising nothing.
Squad11 Feb 2030
The manager makes an example of Turki Al-Otaibi
“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 ratings11 Feb 2030
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad11 Feb 2030
31 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Player ratings11 Feb 2030
4.56 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.
Player ratings11 Feb 2030
9 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad28 May 2029
A fracture rules Saad Al-Mutairi out for 25 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al-Mojzel will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad28 May 2029
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Al-Mojzel may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market28 May 2029
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Mojzel they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom28 May 2029
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Hamad Al-Sheikh has agreed terms with Al-Orobah for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad28 May 2029
The medical room confirms 43 days on the sidelines for Majid Torabi, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Squad28 May 2029
Hussain Halawani 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match17 Feb 2029
No end in sight to Al-Mojzel's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Al-Mojzel has to find a result from somewhere.
Market19 Feb 2029
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Al-Mojzel they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad19 Feb 2029
Lucas Suárez 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.
Boardroom19 Feb 2029
150% of the income goes out in wages at Al-Mojzel
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Player ratings19 Feb 2029
Faisal Al-Subiani was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.20. 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.
Squad19 Feb 2029
“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.
Squad19 Feb 2029
Turki Al-Otaibi dropped after a run of poor form
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.
Match17 Feb 2029
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad19 Feb 2029
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Turki Al-Otaibi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.