Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Marius Hissein will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Gazelle the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad20 May 2030
Words at Gazelle training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hamza Asrir 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.
Adam Tokindang and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Gazelle, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Gazelle will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Hamza Asrir trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Gazelle know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Nobody at Gazelle 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.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Gazelle will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Idriss Souleymane may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
In brief
SquadQuestions about Ali Mbaiguedem on the training pitch