The Tours Chronicle
Squad23 Aug 2027
Adrian Dabasse damages knee ligaments — 82 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 82 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.
Match21 Aug 2027
Tours taken apart
0‑3 to FC Nantes, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Market23 Aug 2027
Sébastien Martinez 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 Tours can pretend not to have heard.
Squad23 Aug 2027
A fracture rules Pierre Ménard 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.
Match21 Aug 2027
Tours make home a hard place to visit
12 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Jérôme Boyer stays put
“The easiest signature of my career.” Jérôme Boyer and Tours agree another 5 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Real improvement from Pierre Charpentier at Tours
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Pierre Charpentier is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Boardroom23 Aug 2027
5 academy players handed senior numbers at Tours
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.
Market23 Aug 2027
One of our own: Stéphane Meyer joins the Tours first team
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Stéphane Meyer 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 One of our own: Bruno Aubert joins the Tours first team
- Market Paul Jacquet steps up from the Tours academy
- Boardroom Nobody left the Tours dressing room in a hurry