Marked for Richard Joly
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad22 Mar 2027
Fady Khatir 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 Tours this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Mar 2027
A row about effort at Tours
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Raymond Henry was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
The manager makes an example of Maxence Derrien
“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.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Market22 Mar 2027
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Yves Deschamps’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Loan watch22 Mar 2027
26 starts and a season average of 6.45. The loan is doing exactly what it was arranged to do.
Loan watch22 Mar 2027
The goals keep arriving from Édouard Dupuy’s exile
3 goals in 36 games at Mansfield Town — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Tours updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
Mehdi Khallati knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mehdi Khallati trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Two hours a week with a tutor, which is the least glamorous thing at Tours and the one that decides whether a foreign signing is still here in two years.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match24 Oct 2026
It had gone 10 games. The players did not celebrate like men who had won a match; they celebrated like men who had been let out of something.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 23 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“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.
Match24 Oct 2026
It finished 1‑0, and it was Richard Joly’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Tours.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Fady Khatir 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words exchanged at Tours
Yann Poirier 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
The afternoon belonged to Richard Joly
A mark of 7.93, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Emmanuel Dubois on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match17 Oct 2026
The wait goes on for Tours
10 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.
Match17 Oct 2026
The goals have deserted Tours
10 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Tours can tell you which week it ends in.
Match17 Oct 2026
Stade Lavallois left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Stefan Bajić, and the manager let it.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Fady Khatir 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Richard Joly 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 Tours this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 35 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Tours is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad19 Oct 2026
20 new faces, and Tours are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.