The Tours Chronicle
Squad15 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Hendricks Cakin
111 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Tours lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match15 Mar 2027
Tours up to position 2
58 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
Alvin Arrondel says Tours went back on their word
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad15 Mar 2027
A falling-out at Tours
Émile Schmitt and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Words at Tours training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christophe Roger 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.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Thibault Noël pulls a muscle — 15 days out
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 15 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
Didier Gonzalez 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 Didier Gonzalez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market15 Mar 2027
The Émile Schmitt story refuses to die
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Émile Schmitt signs something — a contract at Tours or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
The manager makes Romain Padovani a promise
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Tours. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
- Market Joseph Guillot leaves for nothing
- Market Jean Roux leaves for nothing
- The dugout Khalis Merah keeps his manager's vote