Marked for Brahim Bechir
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad26 Nov 2029
4 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Match24 Nov 2029
AS Etat Major will want this one forgotten quickly: 5‑1, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Elect Sport were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Match24 Nov 2029
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 11 matches without defeat is a foundation Elect Sport did not have in the autumn.
Boardroom26 Nov 2029
The accounts make uncomfortable reading. Wages first and ambition second is the order of business at Elect Sport now.
Squad26 Nov 2029
Words at Elect Sport training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ferdinand Gassina 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 ratings26 Nov 2029
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.35, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings26 Nov 2029
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.16, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings26 Nov 2029
Ninety minutes of Yannick Ndilabaye at his very best
Marked 8.13. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Elect Sport.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match27 Oct 2029
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation Elect Sport did not have in the autumn.
Squad29 Oct 2029
Frédéric Djoeta 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.
Player ratings29 Oct 2029
7.54, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Elect Sport had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Boardroom29 Oct 2029
The accounts make uncomfortable reading. Wages first and ambition second is the order of business at Elect Sport now.
Squad29 Oct 2029
Yannick Ndilabaye has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Elect Sport 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.
Match27 Oct 2029
Ninety minutes, two goalkeepers with clean gloves, and not one finish worth keeping. AS DGSSIE will be the happier side with the point.
Squad29 Oct 2029
Idriss Adoum dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Market29 Oct 2029
The name of Mahamat Harouna keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Elect Sport say nothing, which says plenty.
Squad29 Oct 2029
The plan did not have a place for Raul Chandra
Nobody at Elect Sport is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match13 Oct 2029
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.
Squad15 Oct 2029
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 20 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad15 Oct 2029
3 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Player ratings15 Oct 2029
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.59 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match13 Oct 2029
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Elect Sport have 3 straight wins of it.
Squad15 Oct 2029
A move Kenneth Onyango would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Kenneth Onyango is living that version at Elect Sport, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad15 Oct 2029
Words at Elect Sport training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ferdinand Gassina 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 ratings15 Oct 2029
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.30, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Market15 Oct 2029
He is 20, and the scouting reports agree on the only line that matters: the ceiling. Signings like this are lottery tickets written by professionals.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match16 Dec 2028
8 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Match16 Dec 2028
Elect Sport are at home on the road
5 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
Squad18 Dec 2028
Words at Elect Sport training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ferdinand Gassina 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.
Match16 Dec 2028
CotonTchad made Elect Sport work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings18 Dec 2028
Marked 8.09 — 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.
Player ratings18 Dec 2028
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.10, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad18 Dec 2028
Brahim Bechir 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.
Squad18 Dec 2028
Ismaila Mayaki dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Squad18 Dec 2028
Defences have started doubling up on Yannick Ndilabaye
3 goals and a season average of 7.23 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad11 Sep 2028
A fracture rules Mahamat Tchari out for 22 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Elect Sport will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market11 Sep 2028
Only the photograph left for Mahamat Tchari
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mahamat Tchari will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Elect Sport the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Market11 Sep 2028
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Goukouni Abakar reports back to Elect Sport with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Squad11 Sep 2028
Ferdinand Gassina has improved at 35, 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.
Squad11 Sep 2028
Frédéric Djoeta 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.
Squad11 Sep 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Elect Sport this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad24 Jul 2028
Words at Elect Sport training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ferdinand Gassina 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.
Squad24 Jul 2028
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market24 Jul 2028
The name of Issa Mbainaissem has come up in conversations Elect Sport were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Brahim Bechir 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.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Yannick Ndilabaye has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Elect Sport 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match17 Apr 2028
Elect Sport refuse to drop out of the race
Position 2, 54 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.
Market17 Apr 2028
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Elect Sport is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Words at Elect Sport training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Frédéric Djoeta 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.