It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at El Dakhleya this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mohamed Shika was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and El Dakhleya know it.
He is doing his job and he is not settling. El Dakhleya were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
Squad25 Oct 2027
5 new faces, and El Dakhleya 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 10 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Two goals and a mark of 8.72 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
4 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at El Dakhleya this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Mohamed Shika 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.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. El Dakhleya have lost him in all but the paperwork.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what El Dakhleya can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at El Dakhleya this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Military Production pay $84.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Hossam Hassan has improved at 25, 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 53 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Evrard Zag and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Salim Adams 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.
$82.0K was the most the club would pay and Ashanti Gold were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Nobody at New Edubiase United will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at New Edubiase United, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Successful dribbles: 20. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Musa Wakili 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.
21 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Gladson Atiemo to a room that had heard them before.
Nobody at New Edubiase United is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Off the academy pitches and onto a senior team sheet at 17. The debut is the easy part; the second appearance is the one every young player has to earn.
36 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. New Edubiase United lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Evrard Zag 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.
New Edubiase United have gone to Aduana Stars with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Musa Wakili 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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation New Edubiase United are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at New Edubiase United, another week without a signature from Evrard Zag.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at New Edubiase United has been clear about where Francis Adjei stands, which is more than many ever get.
The best deals are the ones the accountants never notice. Shammasu Muhammed arrives at New Edubiase United with his wages the only cost and something to prove the only clause.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Israel Emmanuel is living that version at New Edubiase United, and it tends to show in the first month.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Musa Wakili 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Harrison Appiah is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Andre Boateng is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Mohammed Boakye has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.