“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad17 May 2038
Amos Bukari 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadAndrew Nuhu has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Liberty Professionals is running low.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Liberty Professionals have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Liberty Professionals 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 Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 May 2038
Amos Bukari 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.
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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 14 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Hearts of Oak the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Liberty Professionals will enjoy reviewing.
Two goals and a mark of 8.20 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Liberty Professionals have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.81 — 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 ratings25 Jan 2038
Abeiku Paintsil was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.68. 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.
Amos Bukari 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.
Squad10 Aug 2037
Casimis Fokou 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.