Marked for Ezechiel Bechir
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match20 Nov 2027
19 matches without a win for AS Etat Major
The run now stands at 19, and the questions being asked around AS Etat Major are no longer polite ones.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 98 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Match20 Nov 2027
0‑4 to Elect Sport, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Market22 Nov 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad22 Nov 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AS Etat Major this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Djibrine Hissein 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
The terraces13 Sep 2027
Anger at AS Etat Major 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.
Boardroom13 Sep 2027
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at AS Etat Major is running low.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 16 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market13 Sep 2027
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AS Etat Major they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market13 Sep 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AS Etat Major can pretend not to have heard.
Market13 Sep 2027
So close: Saleh Hissein’s move dies late
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Renaissance moved on, Saleh Hissein reports back to AS Etat Major, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Marius Souleymane has improved at 29, 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. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad13 Sep 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AS Etat Major this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Words at AS Etat Major training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mahamat Doungous 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom6 Sep 2027
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Match6 Sep 2027
Every point is an argument now for AS Etat Major
Position 11 and 11 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Market6 Sep 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AS Etat Major can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom6 Sep 2027
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 23 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market6 Sep 2027
Only the photograph left for Saleh Djimet
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Saleh Djimet will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around AS Etat Major the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Abdramane Haroun is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad6 Sep 2027
At 31 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Words at AS Etat Major training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Djibrine Hissein 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match9 Aug 2027
Position 11, 11 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Squad9 Aug 2027
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.
Market9 Aug 2027
“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 AS Etat Major, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market9 Aug 2027
Saleh Djimet has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AS Etat Major they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market9 Aug 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Saleh Abakar 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.