Marked for Jérôme Mathieu
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces7 Jan 2030
Anger at Sesvete spills outside the ground
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.
Squad7 Jan 2030
The season belongs to Tino Agić
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Sesvete have had the benefit of it.
Market7 Jan 2030
“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 The request is on a desk at Sesvete, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad7 Jan 2030
Shota Chikhradze: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sesvete have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad7 Jan 2030
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sesvete this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Jan 2030
Petar Antolković 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom1 Oct 2029
Sesvete counting the cost
The accounts make uncomfortable reading. Wages first and ambition second is the order of business at Sesvete now.
Squad1 Oct 2029
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Sesvete may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad1 Oct 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sesvete this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match29 Sep 2029
1‑2 to Istra 1961, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad1 Oct 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Cihan Kahraman, and the manager let it.
Squad1 Oct 2029
Toni Gorupec 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.
Boardroom1 Oct 2029
91% of the income goes out in wages at Sesvete
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Player ratings1 Oct 2029
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings1 Oct 2029
A mark of 5.25 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad22 Jan 2029
A fracture rules Raymond Le Roux out for 43 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Tours will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad22 Jan 2029
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.
Squad22 Jan 2029
Tempers go at Tours
Emmanuel Blanchard 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.
Squad22 Jan 2029
Words at Tours training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pierre Giraud 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.
Player ratings22 Jan 2029
Ninety minutes of Pierre Giraud at his very best
Marked 8.23. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Tours.
Market22 Jan 2029
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Pierre Moreau’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Player ratings22 Jan 2029
5.80 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.
Player ratings22 Jan 2029
Successful dribbles: 9. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad15 Jan 2029
Vincent Benoit damages knee ligaments — 14 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 14 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.
Squad15 Jan 2029
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 51 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad15 Jan 2029
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad15 Jan 2029
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.
Match13 Jan 2029
Beaten 2‑3, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Player ratings15 Jan 2029
Ninety minutes of Tanguy Nianzou at his very best
Marked 8.30. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Tours.
Player ratings15 Jan 2029
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market15 Jan 2029
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Jérôme Mathieu has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Tours.
Player ratings15 Jan 2029
Marked 5.50. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.