Marked for Patrick Gonzalez
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market8 Feb 2027
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Gabriel Roger reports back to Tours with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Tempers go at Tours
François Morel 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.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Jean-Pascal Fontaine 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.
Market8 Feb 2027
Mirandés are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Tours will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Loan watch8 Feb 2027
“I watch every Tours game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at RC Strasbourg runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Market8 Feb 2027
He is 20, and nobody at Tours signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces19 Oct 2026
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 6 of the 22 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Théodore Vasseur is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Tempers go at Tours
François Morel 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.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match17 Oct 2026
0‑1 to Bourg-Peronnas, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Nicolas Dupuis 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Loan watch19 Oct 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Tours, and 0 appearances in 10 say he has earned the hearing.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
A mark of 4.37 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 41. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
A defender's afternoon for Julien Guyot
Defensive actions: 32. He was first to everything and second to nothing, and the goalkeeper had an easy day because of it.
Market7 Sep 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Tours, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market7 Sep 2026
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Yann Nicolas reports back to Tours with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Tours
François Morel 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
Arnaud Vincent has left for AC Ajaccio in a $200.0K deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Squad7 Sep 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.
Match5 Sep 2026
A 1‑0 win over Valenciennes, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Marked 8.02 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.