The Tours Chronicle
Squad21 Aug 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Martin Sourzac
70 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Tours lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match19 Aug 2028
Tours run riot against US Creteil
4‑1, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Squad21 Aug 2028
A fracture rules Jean-Luc Royer out for 14 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Tours will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Lenny Leonil: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Tours have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Mathis Lainé, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.71
A mark of 7.71 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Market21 Aug 2028
Tours say no — this time
The offer from Red Star for Daniel Gauthier was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Real improvement from Thiago Gigena at Tours
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Thiago Gigena is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Boardroom21 Aug 2028
Graduation day at Tours
5 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.
The terraces21 Aug 2028
The crowd has taken to Mathis Lainé
At 21 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.
In brief
- Player ratings Ninety minutes of Marc Mercier at his very best
- Market One of our own: Joseph Legrand joins the Tours first team
- Market Tours promote Jérôme Sanchez from within