Marked for Patrick Asante
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market22 Jul 2030
The bid was some way short and Inter Allies did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad22 Jul 2030
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad22 Jul 2030
106 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Market22 Jul 2030
Patrick Asante has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Inter Allies they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad22 Jul 2030
Ékené Awazie 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 Jul 2030
Yomi Ayodeji gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad3 Sep 2029
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market3 Sep 2029
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Hearts of Oak moved on, Mpho Moletsane reports back to Inter Allies, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Player ratings3 Sep 2029
Successful dribbles: 27. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market3 Sep 2029
The shirt still fits. Patrick Asante is back at Inter Allies, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Market3 Sep 2029
As if he never left: Nana Wakaso returns
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Nana Wakaso is a Inter Allies player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
Market3 Sep 2029
The shirt still fits. Andrew Essien is back at Inter Allies, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Seun Ogunribide 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.
Player ratings3 Sep 2029
A performance of 8.77 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad3 Sep 2029
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.