Marked for Sofiane Medjani
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad31 May 2027
Sofiane Medjani damages knee ligaments — 21 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 21 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.
Squad31 May 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 89 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market31 May 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at CR Belouizdad is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad24 May 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sofiane Medjani
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CR Belouizdad lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad24 May 2027
A fracture rules Djaber Kaassis out for 97 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CR Belouizdad will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad24 May 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” CR Belouizdad may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad17 May 2027
Sofiane Medjani damages knee ligaments — 37 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 37 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.
Squad17 May 2027
A fracture rules Djaber Kaassis out for 104 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CR Belouizdad will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad17 May 2027
Koa Santos 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.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match5 Sep 2026
4‑0, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Abdennour Iheb Belhocini provided it, and the 9.27 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
32 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market7 Sep 2026
Mohamed Slimi hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CR Belouizdad can pretend not to have heard.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 15 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
22 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
4 academy players handed senior numbers at CR Belouizdad
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Ninety minutes of Djaber Kaassis at his very best
Marked 9.29. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at CR Belouizdad.