“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 The request is on a desk at Al Shabab, and it is not being withdrawn.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
At 26 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 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.
8 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.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Words at Al Shabab training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Elia Greco 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Walid Saeed is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 19 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Elia Greco 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.
Add another name to the list: Al Dhafra have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Khalid Obaid. The answer from Al Shabab has not changed — yet.
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Shabab will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 17 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Faisal Yaqoob has improved at 26, 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. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Mahmoud Abdulrahman signs something — a contract at Al Shabab or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The words a physio says slowly. 48 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Shabab will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Abdullah Omar 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.
In brief
SquadKhalid Obaid is a better footballer than he was
Elia Greco 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.
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.
“I watch every Al Shabab game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Al Fujairah runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Alfredo Carrillo provided it, and the 8.50 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Two goals and a mark of 8.08 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Sabri Dahal, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 8.16
A mark of 8.16 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.
The bid was some way short and Al Shabab did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Elia Greco 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.
Al Nasr will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Salem Sultan has pre-agreed a move to Al Shabab, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 17 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Al Shabab training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Elia Greco 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Emirates Club paid $110.0K and Al Shabab took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
The phone has started ringing about Khalid Obaid again, and this time the name on the line is Al Fujairah. Al Shabab are listening politely and promising nothing.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Mohamed Obaid 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.
Adel Abubaker Fadaq arrives at 34 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.