Marked for Mathieu Martinez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Sep 2029
Kjetil Haug is the hero from the spot
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Kjetil Haug: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Match19 Sep 2029
Cup progress for AS Nancy
A 1‑1 win over Stade Brestois, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Match22 Sep 2029
AS Nancy make home a hard place to visit
17 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.
Match24 Sep 2029
AS Nancy refuse to drop out of the race
Position 2, 17 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Market24 Sep 2029
Only the photograph left for Titouan Thomas
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Titouan Thomas will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around AS Nancy the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings24 Sep 2029
Marked 7.80 at 21, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Squad24 Sep 2029
A falling-out at AS Nancy
Kjetil Haug and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad24 Sep 2029
Words at AS Nancy training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gabriel Moscardo 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.
Player ratings24 Sep 2029
Pape Meïssa Bâ was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.01. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout3 Sep 2029
“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.
Boardroom3 Sep 2029
Deadline passes with 23 signed and 22 gone
That is the business done at AS Nancy until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Match1 Sep 2029
The run is over for AS Nancy
10 matches without defeat, and then Clermont Foot. Nobody at the ground pretended it would go on forever; nobody expected it to stop here either.
Market3 Sep 2029
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Boardroom3 Sep 2029
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Titouan Thomas has agreed terms with Stade Brestois for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Words exchanged at AS Nancy
Gabriel Moscardo and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mathieu Martinez is 17, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Mamadou Coulibaly 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.
Transfer targets3 Sep 2029
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. AS Nancy will try again when the window opens; OGC Nice may not be selling by then.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Transfer targets20 Aug 2029
The clubs have shaken hands with Monaco; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Match18 Aug 2029
Still nobody has beaten AS Nancy
The unbeaten run reaches 9. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
The dugout20 Aug 2029
Mathieu Martinez: 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.” AS Nancy have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Transfer targets20 Aug 2029
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Nimes have kept their man, and AS Nancy go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad20 Aug 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AS Nancy this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom20 Aug 2029
5 academy players handed senior numbers at AS Nancy
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.
Squad20 Aug 2029
A row about effort at AS Nancy
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mamadou Coulibaly was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Market20 Aug 2029
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Jean Hubert has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market20 Aug 2029
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Jean Sanchez has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market6 Aug 2029
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at AS Nancy is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Player ratings6 Aug 2029
Two goals and a mark of 8.36 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings6 Aug 2029
Sidi Cissé 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.
Match4 Aug 2029
AS Nancy make home a hard place to visit
13 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.
Match4 Aug 2029
Still nobody has beaten AS Nancy
The unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad6 Aug 2029
Words exchanged at AS Nancy
Kjetil Haug and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad6 Aug 2029
At 17 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad6 Aug 2029
A row about effort at AS Nancy
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gabriel Moscardo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match4 Aug 2029
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Mamadou Coulibaly. 2‑1 against US Creteil, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market23 Jul 2029
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AS Nancy they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Transfer targets23 Jul 2029
The clubs have shaken hands with OGC Nice; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Squad23 Jul 2029
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Abdoulaye Bamba is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad23 Jul 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AS Nancy this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Jul 2029
Zakaria Fdaouch has improved at 32, 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.
Squad23 Jul 2029
Words at AS Nancy training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jérémy Gélin 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.
Market23 Jul 2029
The interest is real enough to have reached print. AS Nancy have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
The dugout23 Jul 2029
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Market23 Jul 2029
The clock does Titouan Thomas’s negotiating for him
6 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee AS Nancy could ask drops and the wages Titouan Thomas can ask rise.