The RC Lens Herald
Market9 Jun 2031
Kyllian Antonio turns LOSC Lille down
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Market9 Jun 2031
Bahmed Deuff agrees terms with Le Puy Foot 43
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around RC Lens people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Transfer targets9 Jun 2031
Too dear: RC Lens walk away from Borja Sainz
$5.9M was the most the club would pay and Paris Saint-Germain were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Transfer targets9 Jun 2031
$750.0K settles it between the clubs for Alban Lafont
Olympique Lyonnais have accepted the money. What RC Lens do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Market9 Jun 2031
ESTAC Troyes come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and RC Lens did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
The dugout9 Jun 2031
Benoît Robert keeps the receipts
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” RC Lens may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market9 Jun 2031
Only the photograph left for Nathan Zohoré
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Nathan Zohoré will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around RC Lens the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad9 Jun 2031
Words exchanged at RC Lens
Sékou Mara 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.
Squad9 Jun 2031
Willian Pacho 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.
In brief
- Transfer targets RC Strasbourg tell RC Lens: Tyrese Noubissie is not for sale
- Squad RC Lens are still strangers to each other
- Squad Jean-Luc Guillaume signs a new deal