Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at LOSC Lille is saying, and nobody at Montpellier HSC is enjoying the guessing.
Alieu Njie 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Stade Lavallois have kept their man, and Montpellier HSC go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Nicolas Leclercq and Montpellier HSC agree another 3 years.
Montpellier HSC have made the call to Rodez AF. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Enzo Tchato is on it.
Something was said to Mathieu Michel and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
In brief
The dugoutEnzo Tchato knocks on the manager’s door
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Camil Mmaee has, at Montpellier HSC, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
4 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Alieu Njie 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.
Successful dribbles: 21. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alexandr Koksharov 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.
US Boulogne will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Joffrey Bultel has pre-agreed a move to Montpellier HSC, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
0‑1 to EA Guingamp, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
The dugout8 Nov 2027
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Charles Pierre left the room before anybody could ask which.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Safouane Benzahra has come out of that comparison in the side, and Montpellier HSC have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Théo Sainte-Luce is on it.
46 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Montpellier HSC lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Alieu Njie 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.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Nicolas Leclercq and Montpellier HSC agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Montpellier HSC will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Everson Pereira is on it.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Montpellier HSC, another week without a signature from Christopher Jullien.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nicolas Leclercq trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.