The Baniyas Gazette
Squad4 Sep 2028
Khalfan Mubarak damages knee ligaments — 41 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 41 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.
Squad4 Sep 2028
A fracture rules Fahad Al-Dhanhani out for 17 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Baniyas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings4 Sep 2028
Saviour Godwin runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 28. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Khamis Saleh has been here 13 seasons
149 appearances across 13 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Player ratings4 Sep 2028
Age has not caught Munas Dabbur yet — 8.19
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.19 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Boardroom4 Sep 2028
The Baniyas board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Tempers go at Baniyas
Saviour Godwin 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.
Boardroom4 Sep 2028
6 academy players handed senior numbers at Baniyas
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.
Market4 Sep 2028
One of our own: Hassan Nader joins the Baniyas first team
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Hassan Nader is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
In brief
- Market Baniyas promote Sultan Ismail from within
- Market One of our own: Salem Al Menhali joins the Baniyas first team
- Market Fahad Al Hammadi steps up from the Baniyas academy