The Tours Chronicle
Market6 Sep 2027
Thibault Moreau asks to leave Tours
“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.
The dugout6 Sep 2027
Lucas Bonelli 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.
Boardroom6 Sep 2027
Deadline passes with 17 signed and 17 gone
That is the business done at Tours until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Transfer targets6 Sep 2027
Tim Jabol-Folcarelli turns down Tours
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Le Havre AC keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Rémi Hubert 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.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Real improvement from Antoine Valero at Tours
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Antoine Valero is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Giovanni Reyna has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad6 Sep 2027
A move Eden Doku would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Eden Doku is living that version at Tours, and it tends to show in the first month.
Transfer targets6 Sep 2027
Tours rebuffed over Abakar Sylla
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. RC Strasbourg have kept their man, and Tours go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
In brief
- The dugout Jean Mathieu gets it from the manager
- Transfer targets A loan move for Abakar Sylla is in the works
- The dugout Rémi Hubert gets picked when it counts