Marked for Boubacar Diaby
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad18 Jan 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Wilfried Kouassi
119 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Etoiles du Mande lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
Daouda Togola, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 7.81
A mark of 7.81 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Match16 Jan 2027
The unbeaten run reaches 9. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad18 Jan 2027
25 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Match16 Jan 2027
A 3‑1 win over AS Korofina, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
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.
The terraces18 Jan 2027
He is 18 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
“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.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Amadou Soumaré's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The dugout30 Nov 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Bakary Cissé and Etoiles du Mande agree another 4 years.
Match28 Nov 2026
A goal on 93 minutes turned three points into one and a good afternoon into an argument about game management that will run until Saturday.
Match28 Nov 2026
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Amadou Malle chose the glass-half-full version of 2‑2; the supporters left with the other one.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Daouda Togola, 18, is the weekend’s best young player
Measured against every other kid in the division and first among them. The senior award is where Etoiles du Mande would like this to lead.
Squad30 Nov 2026
The one goal every signing is asked about until it comes. It has come, and a press-conference question has been retired.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
Bakary Cissé 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 Bakary Cissé trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Market5 Oct 2026
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Abdoulaye Kante 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.
Market5 Oct 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Cheick Camara is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market5 Oct 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Djigui Sidibe is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market5 Oct 2026
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Boubacar Diaby has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Match3 Oct 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Tidiane Danioko, and the manager let it.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Amadou Malle after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
No investment in the facilities at Etoiles du Mande
Nothing about this will be in a press release. A plan went upstairs, came back rejected, and the version of the club that would have existed in three years' time just quietly stopped being possible.