Amed Aiki 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.
Squad2 Apr 2035
Words at Valenciennes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Édouard Renault 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.
The young player of the month award goes to a 19-year-old at Valenciennes who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
Nobody at Valenciennes will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Valenciennes, and it is not being withdrawn.
Amed Aiki 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.
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.
Boardroom26 Feb 2035
94% of the income goes out in wages at Valenciennes
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Valenciennes will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
He is 20, and nobody at Valenciennes signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Bassirou Ndiaye will call it something else in private.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Mathieu Dufour and Valenciennes agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
The 2-goal deficit was real and so was the recovery. Ernest Nuamah was at the centre of it, Stade Rennais were at the end of it, and everybody who left early will hear about this one for years.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Paris Saint-Germain, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Otis Caporusso will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Paris Saint-Germain the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Rayan Cherki was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.72. 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.
Marked 8.63 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Paris Saint-Germain is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Paris Saint-Germain this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
41 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Paris Saint-Germain are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Issa Soumaré. 1‑0 against AS Saint-Etienne, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.